hi,

around 3ish months ago my grandma began to feel pain in her stomach. went to dr (we were on vacation so he didnt have her full medical history) and she was diagnosed with colitis. she was given antibiotics and it seemed to respond but the pain never went away so she was given a higher dosage. again it seemed to respond for around a week until her stomach became super super distended and we drove her straight to the er. she was diagnosed with small bowel obstruction, & admitted to the hospital for monitoring.. surgery was recommended but grandma went her whole life (84 years) without having a surgery so she was hesitant. a week into the hospital stay the surgeon tells her it looks like a tumor on the ct and surgery was needed or else she'd be kicked out of hospital. she got a resection done and we learned she was a 4cm tumor of her ascending colon, as well as a few lymph nodes that had to be taken out but the surgeon said he checked the liver/pancreas/etc for any visible tumors and all looked good.. we were under the impression that it would be categorized stage 3a or around that, overall everyone was just happy that it hadn't metastasized (or so we thought).

3 weeks after she's discharged we meet with oncology who tells her that chemo will be likely & genetic testing to be done on the tumor to see if immunotherapy will work. 2 family members throw a fit because they think chemo is "poison" and all that general bs.. he tells us its stage 3c and schedules a followup in 3 weeks. followup rolls around (today!) and oncologist is STUMPED. i can't remember if he said 2 different primary tumors or 2 different genetic markings or what but he said 1 of them is treatable with immunotherapy and 1 isn't which leads me to think its 2 different primaries.. also it had spread to TWELVE different lymph nodes.

he scheduled another followup for 2 weeks from now and also bumped up the staging to stage 4 (unknown if 4a/b/c) and everyone is feeling defeated and confused.

if anyone has any tips for coping with this please let me know.. oncologist told us that time is not of the essence right now and she is NED right now but no one knows and he would prefer to not have her get a pet scan. ct is scheduled for the followup appointment but overall i dont know what to do and have been trouble dealing with this.

sorry for practically writing an essay but i am just very lost.