[Nervy]

My father is in his early 70s. Recently he had a sore throat and went to a doctor, who thought he looked a little pale and ordered some blood tests. Anyway, the blood tests showed his white blood cell levels were over three times higher than normal, and he had moderate anemia. From there they did more blood tests and a bone marrow biopsy.

Today the doctors told us my Dad has some kind of cancer. They still don't know exactly what, as they need to do further tests on the bone marrow sample, but they threw out CMML and MDS as the two possibilities.
I've done enough research to see that these disorders are rare and the outcomes aren't good. I am a wreck. I don't know what to do or what questions I should be asking.

My Dad, again, is in his early 70s, he has diabetes and suffered a heart attack a couple of years ago. At the same time, he is a strong farm boy at heart who people constantly think looks 10-20 years younger than his age. Up until a couple months ago he felt fine (Now he feels tired all the time, which I would guess is the anemia), and in fact tended to a full garden on a daily basis this summer, doing everything himself.

With a lot of these cancer prognosis stats, I'm hoping that they're swung by people in the sample weaker and older than my Dad, but I know I'm probably fooling myself. How much does personal strength have to do with being able to fight this?