Hi all. I don’t post on here often but am reading everyone’s posts Regularly. But I really want your opinions and advise on this matter.
To cut a long story short my partner got diagnosed with bowel cancer September last year following a bowel obstruction aged 42, Stage 3 T4 N1 M0. Had curative surgery but was unable to have mop up chemo due to complications following surgery.
Anyhow in June this year they discovered a few tiny mets on his liver and suspected a met in the peritoneal area. He began chemo (folfiri) and 5fu late June and has so far had seven rounds.
We know that the mets have shrunk as they had to do an early scan in August due to a bowel blockage caused by scar tissue from previous surgeries.
Now we met again with our oncologist yesterday, we were pushing and pushing for what he plans to do in the future, whether any operations are in order etc. He said he doesn’t plan on anything else other than the chemo. He says it is working well and said he will continue with that until it stops working. He said surgery is too risky, it won’t cure it and could just cause the cancer to spread. He said if something is working we would not want to stop it. He is saying because the cancer is in more than one place you can’t operate.
We mentioned that we read all the time on groups that people are having surgery with cancer spread all over the place, he was just saying how risky it is and that we only hear about the success stories and that people that die from these surgeries aren’t around to write their blogs etc.
We feel that we are too young to just accept chemo for the rest of my partners life and feel that more should be done to enable us to fight this.
For the time being we are going to wait for the next ct scan in November and see what the results are, if our oncologist is still reluctant to budge then we will see our gp about getting a second opinion.
What are your thoughts please? Has anyone been in a similar situation where they’ve been told the plan is just maintenance chemo?
