Hi, Karen,
I have an 85 year old mother and I have been thinking about how I would handle this kind of situation with her.
First to address your questions, this is a US site, but we have participants from many countries on here. The advice of cancer patients and survivors does not replace medical advice, but it certainly gives you a more complete and realistic picture of what is involved. And this is a VERY supportive group.
While surgery is often the first treatment for colon cancer, some colon cancer can be treated with chemo first to make the surgery more successful by shrinking the tumors and often rectal cancer treatment starts with chemo and radiation. Surgery is usually considered the "cure" for cancer, but sometimes it is not possible and other treatments can be very successful in providing reasonable quality of life for many years. Each case is very different.
I find that the American Cancer Society site,
http://www.cancer.org, gives good information on CRC staging.
Knowing my mother, having someone go along to the appointments would be critical. Actually everyone with a cancer diagnosis is recommended to do this, since you are not always thinking clearly or may just not hear everything accurately.
Some chemo regimens, including a common first line one called FOLFOX, can include drugs that might be difficult for an older person to tolerate. All chemo is obviously toxic, but certain pre-existing health conditions might make it difficult for your friend to tolerate chemo. I assume that whoever is treating her will have all of her medical history, but sometimes things get lost with older patients, so it is important that all of her history is made available. All of that being said, I took my chemo treatments at the same time as an 84 year old gentleman who, like myself, had to take a ferry every two weeks to get treated since we both lived in the San Juan Islands up here in Washington, and he seemed to be taking it quite well, better than I did toward the end.
A cancer diagnosis is like drinking out a fire hose, so it is wonderful that you are trying to help your friend get her hands around it.
Good luck and keep us in the loop. Lois