Visited the surgeon today...

And that, folks, is why I am NOT a physician..... well....cool, that you have an answer..and yes, it WOULD have been better to get it over the weekend....sigh
BUT HAPPY DANCE< HAPPY DANCE!!!!!
I was stage III....no post surgery chemo....
BUT I was squamous cell...so it's a little different.
Hugs for the great news...you WILL be better now!!!
Kathi

shmurciakova said:

Hey there! Congrats on your pathology results! If I were you I would request a CT scan (chest/abdomen/pelvis) and blood work, including CEA. If all of those come back OK, then I would just go on down the road and chalk this up to a "bump" in the proverbial road. I don't think chemo is normally recommended when there is no lymph node involvement and the above stated tests will confirm that there are no mets.....
I would not do chemo unless I absolutely had no other choice. I have been through it two times and I would not recommend it, I agree with your first statement.
Just my opinion,
Take care, Susan.

I wish there was a way to edit these posts after they are up? If there is, please let me know. I just wanted to say that a full body scan IMO would be unnecessary as I think CC takes a fairly predictable path from the lymph nodes to the liver, so I think (not 100% positive, mind you) that if your liver is good then you don't need to worry about other very remote locations being affected. I don't know of anyone who has had distant mets without ever having liver or lung mets first. Please let me know if any of you have and I will stand corrected.
-Susan.

Hi Patrusha,

This is horrible doctor's office that had you waiting for them and did nothing. You did the right thing that you told the surgeon. I hope that now that they opened the wound, it will heal.

I hope they put you on an antibiotic for urinary tract infection? Try to drink a lot of water - it will help to clean it out. Fluids is the key.

About chemotherapy: it is a very difficult decision. I had to decide for my mother as I am her conservator. She is 68 years old and has alzheimer's type dimentia. She also had II stage with no lymph nodes affected. The oncologist said that cancer may come back without chemotherapy 40-50% if we don't do it and 30-40% if we do it.

It was so difficult for me to decide what is the best for her. I did not want her to suffer from it but I also was worried that it may come back. I don't know what I would do for myself let alone for somebody else... Finally I decided to give her a chance and try it.

After 1st round (round means 2 weeks) her liver functions were elevated, and she had to stop and wait. CT scan showed a couple millimeters nodules in her liver and lungs which were there before the surgery and appeared to be stable and per oncologist are not concern.
When liver functions normalized, she went on 2nd round and after it liver functions went up again. I was very concerned about her liver. It seemed to me that if this drug would cause liver failure, it is not worth it. They told me that this drug has the side effect of affecting liver. So, I thought about stopping the drug.

And then turned out that she has got severe pneumonia. Per doctor - chemotherapy causes the immune system to fail which caused pneumonia. It was so severe that she almost died from it. She is recovering now from pneumonia but we now watching kidneys because she had kidney values elevated because of low blood pressure at the beginning of pneumonia. They said it was renal failure. It could also be from chemotherapy.

Of course, I now have decided - no more chemotherapy. It is not worth it, it kills cancer cells and at the same time it can kill too.

She was on the oral pill Xeloda. Many people here go through it and even though it is very difficult on them as far as side effects are concerned, they were not under the threat of dying like my mother was. However, there is a chance like in the case of my mother.

You may want to look into alternative methods, like alkaline diet, juicing, acupuncture, massage, etc.

There is Emily (2bhealed) on this board who was diagnosed III stage with lymphs affected and refused the chemotherapy and did alternative methods only. She is 4 years NED.

So, I think that you are right that you are looking for survival rate.

They should do scans to check for metastasis. If they don't do it, you should fight for it.

Best wishes and God Bless.
Eleonora

Patrusha,
I had one of those big **** open wounds packed with gauze, too!!!! It was fairly gross most of the time. I packed it myself so I didn't need home health care to do it. I went of chemo 8 weeks after the surgery; it took the wound 6 months to close. Really keep an eye on it. It didn't heal right, so I ended up with a hernia 14 months later. The doctor said it was nothing I did. By the way, excellent news about the node involvement. My thoughts and prayers to you for a full recovery. Terri

scouty said:

So you still have the ole instant menopause symptoms to go thru (ugh) I loved reading that you nailed everything about your situation and am pissed the "help line" didn't help.

Hey ****, how many times should you have to call and scream to get assistance when you know something is wrong...... until you die?????????? How can you say you are defending that kind of treatment????? It is not right and people should be reprimanded/trained for whatever their problem was for not listening to her and her symptoms.

Yes, they can do full body scans (CT/PET)to see if there are any mets but that does involve a serious dose of radiation that does cause cancer. How ironic is that!!!!!!!!!

I don't want to scare you but I was 49 at my dx 2 1/2 years ago, and had to change doctors(after a second opinion recommended by my brother, who is an ENT surgeon) to find out that mine had spread and I was stage 4. I chose to go to a comprehensive cancer clinic (there are over 100 in the US) because I had several within an hours drive of me (I am lucky). Their CT machines were better and found the mets after my ex doctor/hospital missed them with their "second rate" machines for 4 months.

As far as chemo, if it isn't necessary or gives less then a 5% better chance of survival I would never even give it a thought. Learn what the stats mean, I would have to ask **** if his recurrance numbers are for people that did chemo or not (I suspect it is for folks that did chemo, chemo does make you more prone to other cancers down the road). The US medical industry does not keep stats on people that do not follow their drugged regimes.

Continue to do your research and let me know if I can answer any questions you may have. You can check out my personal web page here if you would like to learn more about my history. I am currently NED and have not followed the usual medical recommendations and am supposed to be dead by their stats. I am far from that and needless to say, I think all of those stats are bogus and are manipulated for the corporate finacial gains of too many companies. Money rules, not health, healing, or wellness.

Lisa P.

What I said was that it is not defensible. I don't think one should have to keep yelling to get the treatment they deserve. Unfortunately that seems to be what is required these days.
****

Hi,

It sounds like since you are T2 N0 that the tumor was not in the wall. I would say do the alternatives instead of chemo. The reactions are worse then using the alternatives like Scouty and 2bHealed. They both had great results. I have changed my diet because of them. Good Luck and sorry that the docs were so unresponsive. Kind of makes me mad too that you should have been treated sooner. Sounds like you should have gone to the hospital since nobody was listening. I've done that too. HUGS and hope you heal quickly.

Lisa F (not to be confused with Lisa P) LOL

I was a stage II, with 2 tumors, T3N0M0 and T2N0M0. I agonized over whether to have chemo or not. At the end I decided to go for it. 5% is 5% and statistics don't mean much as each individual is different. As you know by now, there are limitations to labs quality, surgeon quality, imaging resolution etc. Who knows where a few cancer cells lurk? So I went with the conventional wisdom. I have my last chemo today! It was bard but not insurmountable.

Best of luck to you!
Ying