Your husband's situation is close to mine. The standard treatment for Stage 3 is 28 days of chemo and radiation, 6-8 weeks of rest, surgery, 6-8 weeks of rest, chemo.
Your husband's insurance is somewhat better than mine. Your max out-of-pocket should be $1,500 and that's excellent these days. Yes, the bills do add up quickly. I'm at about $1,600 OOP right now with about $35,000 in overall bills. I think that prescriptions aren't included in max OOP. He could take 5FU which is an infused form where he's connected to a pump for it or Xeloda which is oral medication. The Xeloda that they gave me costs $6,400 retail for four weeks. The cost to me with insurance is $180.
The potential for a bag may not be pleasant to think about but, one step at a time.
Radiation can have side-effects. Chemo can have side effects. These are discussed in a lot of threads on this forum.
As far as when to take time off goes: a lot of people work through chemo and radiation. I'm doing that right now. I think that it's harder to do if you're on infusions because you're hooked up to a pump for so long. I really wanted to get started as soon as possible as there's a tumor that's growing inside getting bigger and potentially causing blockages and it could spread to other parts of the body at which point it becomes Stage IV.
So the schedule would be:
28 days (6 weeks) chemo and radiation
6 weeks rest
surgery
And that's where your surgeon gets 3 months from now (12 weeks).
I would recommend a genetic test as well. There are certain kinds of colorectal cancer that can be treated via other means (new drugs) that may be easier to handle.
You can go through my blog thread at
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=58447 to see what I've gone through at somewhat of a micro-level.