xxyford wrote:I know exactly what you are going through.
My dad was diagnosed with rectal cancer in July 2017 and started the mob up chemo(CapeOx) after surgery in late Aug. Every chemo cycle was a nightmare for him, he had to deal with horrible side effect. To make it worse, he caught flu on the 4th chemo cycle and has to stop it. The oncology told us about the research that 3 months of Adjuvant Chemo has a less than 1% higher recurrence rate compared to 6 months of Adjuvant Chemo and he thinks it is ok to stop it here considering the horrible side effect.
I could not stop thinking about this since then. I keep asking myself, are we making the wrong decision? What if he is the 1%? As time pass by, I then realize being anxious doesn't help anything, having a peaceful mind can actually help my family. I try to tell myself positive things and these thoughts really help me calm down:
1. For stage 3 patients, surgery only has 60% cure rate. Maybe we are among the 60%.
2. The effectiveness of chemo is not evenly distributed through each round, missing the later rounds is not really that critical..
3. The new research is based on a large dataset, do believe in science.
It is always easy to say than do, I am still super anxious about the 9-month checkup next week, I am praying for a NED result.
I hope my experience can help, wish we all have only NED results coming.
Yes me too . I hope we are in that 60% . I have my CT scan coming up this week and my anxiety is thru the roof just thinking about it . Pray nothing shows