Hey everyone, just updating you on my dad. He recently had another pet scan. This morning was follow up with the doctor and the tumor has grown and showing active (meaning it's growing) now - it is small as a nickel and they want to snip it. He would stay in hospital for 3-4 days to get diagnosis if cancer or not. If so they would remove part of lung that nodule was on.
Is having surgery a bad option? Wouldn’t chemo be better?
Surgery is the Gold Standard in cancer treatment. It’s an option not offered patients with advanced cancer. I’m grateful that it’s an option for him. Surgery gets it out of there where they can’t be sure Chemo or radiation does. He may ask about adjuvant chemotherapy, in case the primary shed any cells. It would mop them up.
Usually adjuvant and neo adjuvant therapies are only offered when the tumor reaches a certain size or stage. I’ll try to find a link for you.
Best hopes!
Thanks for the insight, Denzie. When we hear surgery and cancer we tend to freak out and think of the what if’s. I was always told that once cancer hits air it spreads (this is what was told to me when I was younger and my grandfather head a brain tumor). What’s adjuvant chemo?
Adjuvant Chemo means Chemo given after surgery. Neo adjuvant chemo is chemo given prior to surgery.
The thing about those surgeries where they say they opened him up and he died soon after? Ive come think what happened is that they opened him up and found the cancer had already spread much further than expected and closed them up saving them some of the pain of recovery. Just a guess though.