Anyone ever decide against adjuvant chemo after resection?
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Serena, Hello, my name is Pat and I am a resection patient with 0 lymph involvement and I chose to forgo chemo treatments, my onc. suggested I do not get chemotherapy. He said he would let me have it if I felt it would help psycologically …? Well I certainly didnt want chemo to suppress my fears, thats for sure. I chose to not have it and I am happy I didn’t…. Pat
Hi Serena, glad to hear that your mom was a candidate for resection and that they got clear margins. This was the case for my husband as well who had his surgery in May. He decided to go ahead with the chemo for 6 months. He receives two drugs referred to as gem/cis. I’m not going to lie, FOR HIM, the chemo has been tough just recently…particularly with no appetite and chemo brain/fogginess. Last week, after 4 months, he was thinking of stopping the chemo, but decided that he has gone this far, he can handle the last 6 infusions. People on here will tell you that everyone responds differently and that is absolutely true. Some people have little or minor side effects. They will also say that there are no wrong decisions, it is very personal. That is also true. Only your mom and you can/should make the decision to go with the adjuvant chemo. That being said, there are meds for nausea and appetite. Marinol also helped him some.
Good luck with the decision. I know it is a difficult one. I didn’t give you much additional info, other than what we decided and what we are dealing with. Whatever choice you make will be the right one for you. We decided to made a decision and not look back.
Best of luck to you both.
MelindaHello,
Mom and I are having difficulty deciding if adjuvant chemo is the right choice for her. She just had total resection, 0 lymph involvement. I know chemo is recommended to clean up microscopic cells that may be lingering behind but the oncologist also said it only decreases chance of cancer returning by 5%. Now I know statistics suck but I want my mom to do everything she can to prevent it from recurring. My moms hesitation is that she’s terrified (as most are!) of the side effects. She’s just starting to get her energy and appetite bsvk after surgery and she’s worried chemo will take that all away.. And not sure if the 6 months of chemo will be worth it for a mere 5%. Doc recommended 6 months of Gemzar with weekly half hour infusions.
Has anyone ever had a resection and chose not to proceed with chemo?And as far as I’ve read in previous posts, most adjuvant chemo consists of combo CIs/gem or gem/ox. Wonder why our oncologist only recommended gem.
Serena
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