The Colon Club

Good evening. I really need your guys wisdom please. I have an out of town friend who's mother was diagnosed 3 days ago with rectal cancer. He came home for her 1st surgery today, which was a colostomy bag. And asked if I could "help as needed", since he was out of town.

With that said, and as a male child, he ask very little....but tells me full plan, in his terms.

She is in mid 70's, and I have no idea of stage.?

Next, they will in next few weeks begin 6-8 weeks of chemo/radiation. Upon success of shrinking will do surgery to remove mass. She will then begin another round of chemo.

She has always been a blessing, but I would like to get a bit of information on what I'm looking at for prognosis.

Do her treatment plans indicate any staging? Does age affect success rate?

I feel unfortunate she is using local, small hospital, which specializes in nothing. Not to say it's a bad hospital, but it's not a specialty hospital for anything.

Blessing to all. Thank you for providing me as much wisdom and knowledge as you can.

This sounds like "standard of care" type treatment. The questions are what Stage is she: Tumor, Nodes
and metastasis. Will the colostomy be temporary or
permanent?

You can get some information from the NCCN patient guidelines. The easy-to-read patient guideline for Colon Cancer can be accessed here:

http://www.nccn.org/patients/guidelines/colon/index.html

There is also a PDF version of NCCN patient guideline specific for Rectal Cancer available for download from their website. Rectal Cancer treatment and prognosis is a bit different from that of colon cancer, but both follow the TNM staging system. Rectal cancer treatment usually involves chemo/radiation, whereas colon cancer treatment doesn't usually involve radiation

Here is the link for downloading the PDF file for Rectal Cancer;

https://www.tri-kobe.org/nccn/guideline/colorectal/english/rectal.pdf

To determine the complete staging they need to do some scans of the lungs, liver and other areas to check for spread. Have they mentioned the results of any scans?

I'm a bit confused.

Did she have surgery yet? If not, yes radiation is standard prior to surgery for rectal cancer.

If it's possible, I would recommend her getting a board certified colon rectal surgeon. They have more training in the colon rectal area and can be very good when dealing with a rectal cancer diagnoses.

Hope this helps,

Lee

The only surgery she has had is a colostomy bag. UPDATE: STILL IN HOSPITAL SINCE I POSTED THIS!!!

tng wrote:Good evening. I really need your guys wisdom please. I have an out of town friend who's mother was diagnosed 3 days ago with rectal cancer. He came home for her 1st surgery today, which was a colostomy bag. And asked if I could "help as needed", since he was out of town.

With that said, and as a male child, he ask very little....but tells me full plan, in his terms.

She is in mid 70's, and I have no idea of stage.?

Next, they will in next few weeks begin 6-8 weeks of chemo/radiation. Upon success of shrinking will do surgery to remove mass. She will then begin another round of chemo.

She has always been a blessing, but I would like to get a bit of information on what I'm looking at for prognosis.

Do her treatment plans indicate any staging? Does age affect success rate?

I feel unfortunate she is using local, small hospital, which specializes in nothing. Not to say it's a bad hospital, but it's not a specialty hospital for anything.

Blessing to all. Thank you for providing me as much wisdom and knowledge as you can.

Hi,

I thought they would of done a clinical staging before radiation, surgery or any chemo. This gives the surgeon and ONC an indication of how successfully radiation was and also gives the surgeon an idea of affected lymph nodes and T size of the tumour before he operates. That's how I thought it works.

The clinical staging can be done by CT, or MRI. Although it may not produce a true estimate of the true staging, it still gives an idea of the tumour size and how far its grown through the different layers in the rectum and mesorectum and any suspicious lymph nodes.

Maybe you can request one before radiation starts.

Has she had scans? if so ask for the scan report.