Newly diagnosed

Hi Kalee,

Thanks for the reply! I went through the surgery at Oct 20 without a stoma.

Looking back, the surgery recovery was fast to me. Probably only a week or two, and the pain medication did help.

I ended up having 3 individually developed cancer in the colon, and the left semi-colectomy take them all out. With multiple high-risk factors, I know the recurrence chance (direct Stage 4 metastasis or local recurring) is around 20%-25% each. But the combined recurrence chance is not simple math of 20%*3 or (1-80%^3, if you know the probability of single events) to calculate.

Every opinion I asked told me that I have to do chemo, and I'm going to start this on Dec 8 with CAPOX, two days later. It's been even more complicated with fertility concerns, as it does cause short- and long-term damages to fertility, but yes, survival is more important.

Thank you very much for the support and encouragement! It is very important to me! I'll be fighting for this chemo in the next few months:)

Thanks a lot!

I do have a constant low HGB/MCV/MCH/MCHC before surgery, but after 6 weeks, the HGB and MCV have returned to normal, and MCH/MCHC have been up to near the lower boundary.

I found this research called "Mean Corpuscular Volume as a Predictive Factor of Response to Preoperative Chemoradiotherapy in Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29743887/ It's a rectal cancer research from China in 2018 (a little different from colon cancer) with only 55 sample size, when they have 125,000 rectal cancer patients every year. And this "locally advanced" is very confusing. They probably needs more data to get a solid conclusion.

But yes, the MCV needs to be bought up. I'm taking a multivitamins including fiber supplements. Instead of beta-glucan, I was taking psyllium (Metamucil). I probably should compare them.