Staging Question

Stages
I didn't read the article you read yet, but I have read a little about staging. When the cancer is first diagnosed, the doctors read the path report, measure the tumor, run some tests to see how far the cancer has traveled around the body, and "stage" the cancer. In stage 1 the cancer is fairly small and localized. In stage 4 the cancer has traveled away from the primary spot and started to set up camp in other places in the body. The other stages are somewhere in between. I have two kinds of cancer: breast cancer stage 1 from 2002 and lung cancer stage 1 from 2006. When I had lung surgery in 2006, the surgeon originally thought it was breast cancer that had traveled to the lung. He even sent me home with the diagnosis of stage 4 breast cancer. I "knew" I had a month to heal up from surgery and then meet the oncologist for chemotherapy. That's the way stage 4 breast cancer is treated and that's what everyone thought I had. Then the pathology report came back with a different kind of cancer and I was re-staged and diagnosed to stage 1 lung cancer. Surgery is the usual treatment for stage 1. Chemotherapy is the usual treatment for stage 4. And lung cancer doesn't respond to breast cancer chemo. So the diagnosis and staging made a difference.

Surgeons know surgery. They do not do chemotherapy. My breast surgeon wouldn't even offer a guess at what kind of treatment I would be offered after surgery. He said that was the oncologist's specialty and just like he wouldn't want the oncologist to tell him how to operate he wouldn't tell him how to prescribe. I hope your husband will talk with an oncologist soon about his treatment options. Good luck finding the right doctor.