Hello all,

Sorry about the long post - I wanted to share my partner's story with you and ask your advice on how to deal with the prognosis we've been given, which has left me slightly confused. 

My partner, 59, was diagnosed with stage 4a bowel cancer in September 2018. He'd been sent back by the Drs and his symptoms passed off as IBS, until we went private and a CT revealed the large tumour in his colon. The tumour had erupted so my partner had to have emergency surgery and was fitted with a stoma bag. Luckily, he made it through the surgery and despite the cancer being so advanced and erupted, it hadn't spread. The surgeons were quite optimistic that they'd removed it as well as they could and he received 13 courses of adjuvant chemotherapy. He handled the chemo quite well and we've been fortunate enough to living our life as normal as it gets.

The chemo finished in July 2019 and we were told that for now, things were looking good but they'd have to keep a close eye on him as there were high chances of recurrence in the first 3 years. The plan was to wait 12 weeks, have a number of scans and then start to discuss the reversal of the stoma bag. 

So those scans have now happened and after a colonoscopy 3 weeks ago we were told that the cancer had returned already. This was a big blow, but we thought we knew what to expect now and we will deal with it like we did the first time. Fast forward 2 weeks and after a number of other tests (in total: blood tests, PET scan, CT, colonoscopy), we spoke to the consultant about the treatment plan. We were advised there'd be more chemo; this time a more agressive one that would most likely cause hair loss. The consultant also said that the cancer was contained to the pelvic area and hadn't spread from there, but it would need an MRI to conclude where exactly in the pelvic area it was. 

The shocking and confusing part was when the consultant asked if we wanted to discuss the prognosis. He told us that there is a 25% chance to survive the next 2 years and 10-15% to survive the next 3. He also said these are statistics and every case is different and with my partner being young and very fit definitely being in his favour. And I think we were just too shocked to ask questions after that, but were both left confused now as to how it could go from "clear but at high risk of recurrence" to 2 years to live. I know that nobody can predict what will happen, but neither of us was expecting this time frame so suddenly; if anything, I was expecting perhaps 5-10 years, so this came as a complete shock. 

Does anyone have any views or any advice on how to deal with such information?

Thank you.