hi my Reuben I have just been diagnosed with stomach cancer a week ago and today is the day I have to come to a decision weather to go for surgery first or have chemo first then surgery. I’m still unsure which is best for me.
Dear Reuben, whenever I make a decision like this I always do it on the basis of informed consent, so if you are seeing your consultant I would ask him to give you the data as far as he knows it on the overall effectiveness of chemotherapy plus surgery or surgery alone. I understand the thought of chemotherapy can be very daunting but as someone who has had extensive chemotherapy for blood cancer it was not as difficult as I first thought. There are many medications to control sickness if it occurs and you will be monitored carefully. I have included a link to a page on this site that will give you some information provided by Macmillan on chemotherapy for stomach cancer.
Sorry to hear you are in this situation. I faced a similar dilemma when I was diagnosed. You can read my blog which provides more information.
There is a ‘gold’ standard pathway which is chemo then surgery then chemo for stomach cancer. There does need to be an assessment of whether you can tolerate chemo. In my case the cancer was very early stage so initially I thought it was to be surgery but after the MDT meeting I was offered chemo first. I decided to do it for two reasons. Firstly they don’t know for sure what they are going to find until they operate so although there are scans and biopsy results, they can’t be absolutely sure. Secondly chemo is much harder after stomach surgery and a high percentage of people can’t complete it. I wanted the best chance of beating this and didn’t want to regret not having had chemo first.
I am happy for you to PM me if that helps
xx
Jac
Life is what happens when you are making other plans!
