Hi all looking for advice bowel cancer pt4a

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Hi im looking for some advice regarding my friends child shes very young early 20s and had a colonoscopy in march that showed her colon was full of polyps with 2 areas they sed was cancer ,shes had her full colon removed in may and 22 lymph nodes removed 4 have come bk as cancer ,she is having chemo at the moment till sep ,the only info she has is a letter saying pt4a ,lymph n2a ,v1 vascular invasion ,thats all in hand written drs notes ,her stoma nurse said she is t4a ,is this the same as a stage 4 cancer ,ihoq serious is pt4a ,is this meaning theres spread ,any advice would be appreciated

Maninbath over 1 year ago

Hi. I had about a foot of large intestine removed along with over 30 lymph nodes, 22 of which were cancerous as were some associated blood vessels. As I understand it cancerous lymph nodes local to the site of the cancer are treated differently to distant lymph nodes that become cancerous, as is now the case with me. Despite the number of affected lymph nodes my cancer was classed as Stage 3 following my bowel resection. I now have secondary cancer of the lymph nodes, which my oncologist says is incurable. I would also stress that my bowel cancer is a rare type with significantly lower survivability than ‘normal’ adenocarcinoma.

There is more on the bowel cancer pages of this website regarding local area affected lymph nodes and secondary cancer of the lymph nodes.

Kind regards.

Maninbath’

court over 1 year ago

Hi ,

It refers to the layers it has grown through the colon . Stage 4 is different and comes under M for Metastatic . Meaning it has left the original site and moved to a new location .
You can phone our helpline and they would be happy to go through the staging .0808 808 0000

If her staging says M (0) then there is no metastatic spread and not stage 4 .

They would normally give a stage 4 diagnosis very clearly . They are not inclined to sugar coat . But a lot of people get confused between t 4 and stage 4 .
Take care ,

Court

Helpline Number 0808 808 0000