My Mother in law was operated on for Colorectal Cancer a year ago @ 91

krzyjain
krzyjain Member Posts: 1
edited March 2014 in Colorectal Cancer #1
My Mom is 92 and still lives by herself in a rather large home. She is very frail. While she was in the hospital for her surgery a year ago, she had a serious seizure and now she has memory lasps..before the surgery she had a very sharp memory and now that she doesn't she gets so upset. She wants to continue to live in her home and says she doesn't need anyone (we did purchase Life Alert for her but has no controll whether she wears it)to live with her...I think she does, however, she will not hear of it. She has had a really hard time adjusting to the change in her body. She has a hemitologist because she is very anemic and has been for over 15 years and needs to get her blood checked ever other week and an infusion every 6 month. A year ago her blood doctor saw the cancer marker in her blood and sent her to get colonoscopy, that is how she found out. Now other complications have come up do to her age, medication and the surgery (she only had surgery, no cemo) in general. Her hemitologist wants her to get another colonoscopy and she does not want to get one. She only weight about 92 lbs and a host of other age related ailments and they have had to take her off some of her regular meds do to her High Potassium effecting her kidneys. So most of her pain meds she can not take because it effects her potassium and she is in pain a lot of the time. She told her doctor that she does not want to have the test and maybe I was wrong but I told her she didn't have to if the answer to my question was no. The question was if they found cancer again would she have another operation and would her surgent operate on her in the condition she is in at this time? She said she would not go through with another surgery and told her doctor this, however, he still wants her to have it. Is it true it takes 5 to 10 years for a polyp to go cancerious? I do not know what to tell her, because she does not want to go through this again and she has friends that has had the bag attached and she doesn't want that either. We are going to talk to her doctors, her surgent & internist and see what they think before we talk with her hemitologist. The hemitologist said that he did not see any marker in her blood test.

Any suggestions?

Comments

  • PGLGreg
    PGLGreg Member Posts: 731
    #2
    A colonoscopy is not merely
    A colonoscopy is not merely diagnostic, but can remedy some problems. So just because your mom is determined to not to have another operation, that does not mean a colonoscopy is pointless. If her doctors think she should have one, their judgment in the matter is probably better than hers or yours.

    --Greg
  • Buzzard
    Buzzard Member Posts: 3,043 Member
    #3
    PGLGreg said:

    A colonoscopy is not merely
    A colonoscopy is not merely diagnostic, but can remedy some problems. So just because your mom is determined to not to have another operation, that does not mean a colonoscopy is pointless. If her doctors think she should have one, their judgment in the matter is probably better than hers or yours.

    --Greg

    If your mom is of sound mind.......
    Then I think it would be her decision to make ...I understand completely, I have a mom that is determined to outlive us all and I hope she does but she is bent on having things her way and no one is going to tell her what to do or when to do it. At 92 (my mom is 80) I think if she is of sound mind then in my opinion she should delegate her own wishes as hard as it is to deal with it as their children...only my opinion though...I simply tell mine what I think and let it go at that , I tell her if she needs me for anything to let me know. It works well for us so far....Good luck to you both, and give her a hug for me, at 92 she certainly deserves it........Bless you both......Clift

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