Just diagnosed,

staging
Hello and welcome to the board. I'm sorry you have need to be here, but you're lucky you found this board right away. I didn't find it until a year after I was diagnosed.(I was diagnosed stage IV- mets to liver and both lungs- at age 41 in Aug. 2007). I have learned many things from many people here about treatment, side effects, surgery, etc. I still am learning, but now also enjoy being able to share information with others and giving support when needed. This is going to be a rough ride for you and your husband, but keeping a positive "we can beat this" attitude is a must. Giving in emotionally, mentally, and spiritually (I think) really kind of is a negative on the cancer itself. Having a doctor who has a positive attitude and wants to fight this aggressively is also very, very important. If your husband ends up with a doctor who has doom and gloom news- run the other way and find another doctor! I was so fortunate that my oncologist was very positive and gung ho about "we're going to beat this!" from the beginning. He never gave me the "you have -- months or years left to live" line. No one has, actually, and I make it clear when I come into contact with new or consulting doctors, that I do not want to hear anything like that. I can read and I know some people don't make it, but it would just kill the fighting spirit within me to actually hear it from my doctors. That's something to consider. Everyone is different though. If you do ask for a timeline or the doctor gives it, just remember doctors aren't God and everyone is different. There have been several people on this board who have been pretty bad off, but then have recovered and are still around.

With all that said, I'm mainly referring to stage IV patients with what I said above. Hopefully your husband is an earlier stage than that and will do very well!!
I had an ultrasound at UCSD in San Diego (I live in Fallbrook, which is about 40 miles northeast from downtown San Diego). I was staged as a stage IIB, as no lymph nodes showed up at all in the rectal or pelvic area. Two days later I was given a "routine" CT scan in which I was told they weren't expecting to find anything, but always give them to make sure and have a baseline CT for comparison if needed down the road. My doctors were all sadly amazed when my CT scan results came back showing numerous tumors in my liver and in both lungs. I asked how that could be if nothing showed up in my lymph nodes & was that a mistake. They said no, that in rare cases rectal cancer can bypass the lymph system and travel directly to the liver via a main artery/vein that empties from the rectum into the liver. I never had any lymph node show up on a scan until close to two years after my diagnosis, so I guess that is what happened to me. That is supposedly rare, though, but if your husband's doctors don't also do a CT scan soon, I'd request one be done if I were you.
I know it's hard to have to wait so long. Once I was initially diagnosed, I had to wait 5 weeks before I was able to start on any treatment, which was definitely tough knowing what was in me. But, I did respond well to chemo & several of the liver and lung tumors shrunk away with the first few treatments. I was initially told (when they thought I was a stage II) that I would have six weeks of radiation and chemo directed at shrinking my rectal tumor to prep it for surgery (to make it smaller in the hopes of being able to save my rectum since the tumor was just 3 cm above the anal sphincter). That plan changed when I got the CT scan results back, though. They decided I needed to have systemic chemo first before we could even think of doing anything to the rectal tumor.

Well, I would be glad to be of any more support to you and your husband that I can, or answer any questions you might have. As I said, I know very well how hard it is to wait, especially at the beginning, when you're still in shock and are freaked out about having to wait at all to get going on getting the cancer out!

If you'd like, I will certainly pray for your husband- for finding good doctors who will be positive and proactive, and that you and your husband will be able to be calm through all this turmoil and still have faith and hope.

Take care and God bless-
Lisa