Colostomy

Every situation is different so it's hard to say. My mop up chemo after surgery was delayed and almost two years later I was diagnosed with mets in my lung. Did the chemo not help? Did it not help because it was delayed? Was it something else? There's no way to say. My onc had told me that if I waited too long after surgery the odds of the chemo helping were reduced by 15% from 65%. Since a person who has never had cancer has a 47% chance of being diagnosed with it in their lifetime I don't know if that means I was down to as much chance as anybody else or how the numbers work.

That being said, I was on the mop up chemo when I had a blood clot that almost took my life. It was a pulmonary embolism which is a blood clot in the lung. The mets are in the lung that had the blood clot and I'm told that they were sticking things down there to clean it up and that a lobe had died from it. So did the PE actually irritate something and that's why the cancer turned up again in that one lung? So much of cancer treatment is just conjecture.

I wish I had an answer or strong suggestion for you but I really can't offer anything. Don't forget that chemo kills just as many cancer cells as healthy cells and is no guarantee of 'getting' the cancer cells or at least not all of them. I do know that they say the first and best treatment for cancer is surgery. Sorry, I'm probably just giving you more questions than answers.

Best of luck to your mom.

Jan