The Colon Club

Hi all,
just wondering here if the docs are taking their sweet time to react.
My DW was officially dx with re-recurrent CRC on Jan 8th 2014.
We're now Feb 4th and we should be at Mayo on Feb 27 2014....seems to me that's a huge interval between the biopsy and surgery date. It's hard to accelerate the process since it involves a lot of bureaucratic aspects.
Biopsy report mentioned that it's a grade 2.
All in all, almost two months of delays, is that normal?
Best
Charles

Have you asked the doctors? If they say there's no big hurry, then I would take them at their word. If they say it's an unavoidable scheduling conflict or something like that, I'd start to get nervous. Though even if that's the case, there still may be no big hurry. Hard to speculate without more information.

I think (IMO) the delay caused me to go from stage 3 to stage 4, but that is because I could not use xeloda. I then waited a 7 weeks to get on 5fu and other chemo. Then it went to lungs. Not happy but that is the journey on this trip. Find out why asap.

The doubling time for an adenocarcinoma tumor of the colon can be between 0.05 to 7.1 years. The Mean doubling time in a recent study was 1.2 years the median is .7 years. So unless its very aggressive it likely will only double in size in about a 8 to 10 months time. If they caught it early and its small, then its likely not to cause an obstruction for a while, and perhaps not be particularly dangerous.

See:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23436826

An earlier study from 1984 indicated that it could vary from 146.5 to 398.5 days.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6526254

so you can see it varies quite a bit. My biggest worry would be that it could metastasize to some where else in that time frame. I would ask your doctors what the risk is by such a delay. In the mean time - you might want to try low dose aspirin, or Celebrex and or perhaps using Cimetidine (Tagamet) which is available over the counter in the US prior to surgery. There is a thread in these forums about this already if you are interested in its use.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=45503

Best Regards,

GrouseMan

Thanks for your input!
Seems like Tagamet is rather scarce here in Montreal, our local pharmacist mentioned that Pantoprazole is the newest generation of Tagamet available up here. I did not do a lot of research on Panto but according to this cancer center http://cancer.dartmouth.edu/pf/health_e ... a/d04514a1 the effects may be adverse and chronic use can cause stomach cancer (in animals though).

Anyhow, seems like our Health Dept in Qc is reviewing my DW demand to be treated at Mayo. The government will cover most of the fees related to the upcoming surgery (we're blessed, extremely lucky) and therefore they're doing their due dil and it will take another 10-12 days or so. So we'll have to be patient but they're picking up the tab!
A+
Charles

It seems a bit long to me. I was diagnosed by colonoscopy and scheduled for surgery before the biopsy came back in like two days later. My surgery was 8 days after the colonoscopy I believe.

Although Pantoprazole works similarly as Tagamet for acid reflux, it is not equivalent with regards to its anti-cancer properties. Tagamet is the only drug in this class which has shown this additional effect. The other similar drugs do not. The pharmacist is correct that this is a new generation proton pump inhibitor, but it's effect against cancer is not likely to be there.

Regards,

GrouseMan.