Hi everyone thank you for letting me joim this forum. My 80 year old father has just been diagnosed after having a colonoscopy which found a 50mm tumour. He is a very fit 80 year old except for the last 6 months. Bloods showed anaemia and he also had a positive fit test. The mdt meeting is Friday. After he had the colonoscopy the consultant mentioned surgery but said it depended on ct resuots. They have shown luckily it hasnt spread. We were all reeling whilst in the consultants office so didnt take it all in. Obviously weve been looking online but theres so much conflicting info. His gp mentioned possibly radiiotherapy. Wd they do that as well as surgery? Would they operate on an 80 year old? So many questions. Im just glad ive discovered this brilliant website.
Basically tumours/cancer can spread in two ways. It can spread through lymph nodes, then it can spread through your blood vessels/vascular system. The main/most common areas of spread are to liver and lungs. They give you an upper body scan to check that it hasnt spread to liver or lungs. If the cancer has spread to liver or lungs they wouldnt operate on the bowel, instead they would give him systematic chemotherapy. If the cancer hasnt spread they would operate or give him radiotherapy to shrink before surgery. What they do when someone is over a certain age is do a few health and fitness tests. Bike test and ECG. If he passed these then they would be able to operate. My dad has been through all these but passed the tests. hes 73. They definately arent ageist so to speak. He will have his scans then they will have a meeting and decide what is the best plan of action. Wishing your dad all the best x
My dad was 80 when he was diagnosed. He is 82 now.
They way they wanted to do it with dad, here in America, was 5 weeks of radiation and oral chemo, then a colostomy and a bag, then infusion chemotherapy.
But I've read that the protocol can be different.
My dad chose to not get the surgery, and there is a worry that his colon/rectum can grow tumors and block defecation. But the surgeon was honest and said at his age a colostomy surgery would be very hard on him.
It's a tough decision. We had to listen to what dad wanted. I've been in cancer waiting rooms and have seen how chemotherapy ravages the body and especially the mind.
Knee surgery is not nearly as invasive and complicated as a colostomy. I had a 10 hour back surgery at age 40 and 9 years later I'm still exhausted from it.
I realize the knee surgery isn't as hard to recover from. My surgery resulted in a double ostomy and has really wrecked me.
My thinking was around the ability to undergo the surgery at all. Whether the trauma of surgery is worth the potential benefits is a personal decision. I could understand someone deciding against surgery. At your Dad's age, he may feel his quality of life will be better without surgery. However, it was his choice, He wasn't blocked from surgery due to his age. The OP was concerned his Dad might not get a choice. I was trying to alleviate that concern. I make no judgements about what people choose.
I think many of us will say that it's this awful 'waiting and not knowing' period that can be the most stressful mentally. When there is a clear plan of action in place, however daunting it might be, at least you know what is happening.
In the U.S. definitely encountered ageism with my 82 year old dad. They don’t even try to quantify what “strong enough” means to them to trial a daily chemo pill with dad. They say it’s not off the table but speak so negatively about it, that he’s scared. Meanwhile he’s stuck in a loop of severe constipation and repeated bowel trips, laxatives. So a palliative chemo pill could be the thing to shrink the tumor a little, if radiation he just tried doesn’t work.
I'm sorry to hear about your dad. Hopefully the radiation will work.
From my own experience, they gave me radiation before chemo because I was so sick. They said I would get faster relief from my symptoms doing rradiation. And it worked.
Chemo is slower than radiation so it seems like they may be trying to provide quicker relief. Diarrhea is a very common side effect of radiation. Make sure he stays hydrated.
Thanks for sharing. Can I ask how long it took the radiation to show effects for you? His loose stools are because of the tumor not letting hardly anything pass, not from the radiation. Unfortunately.
I think it took a couple weeks to see improvement but my memory is a bit fuzzy. I was really very sick at the time. However, I only did radiation for 6 weeks and I definitely noticed improvement during that time frame. I'd give it a month at least.
I had diarrhea prior to radiation as well. I also had rectal cancer. In my case, the tumor grew out from the rectum and was invading nearby organs rather than staying put and blocking output. That was both fortunate for me and unfortunate.
