Recently diagnosed

Firstly, sorry to hear your husband is going through such a rough time. The fact that the tumour is shrinking is great news. The surgeon would want to wait until the he full treatment is completed before speaking with you, that is normal. I'm only guessing here, but I imagine the options may well be different depending on how much the tumor has shrunk. 

Interestingly my GP was talking about immunotherapy, when I mentioned it to my oncologist he kind of rolled his eyes, apparently immunotherapy only works in a tiny fraction of bowel cancer cases.

Good luck, focus on that positive, the cancer is shrinking.

Thank you for your reply.

Hi patricia51 

Firstly im sorry you’re having to go through this.

my husband was diagnosed in 2024 with locally advanced rectal cancer and we were also told that they needed to try and shrink the tumour before they could look at surgery due to the size and being able to get clear margins as the cancer was in the surrounding wall. We didn’t even meet the surgeon initially as they wanted to just focus on shrinking it first. I guess they also can’t tell you much as they don’t know what he’ll need until after the chemo is finished.
He had 6 rounds of chemo and then chemo radiotherapy (I think radiotherapy is only for rectal rather than colon) which did the job and he was then offered surgery. Only then did we meet and speak with the surgeon. He had the surgery April 2025 which was successful and we’re now just waiting for his one year scans. 
it was a long journey but we made it through! We tried to just focus on one step at a time and it worked for us and made everything a bit more manageable.

best of luck with everything xx

I am so happy for you both that is all worked positive thoughts sent you way 

Trish 

Thank you, and you stay strong