Hello Jubbee,

                         its all very sressful at first, the not knowing is the worst.Think of it as a railway journey,going from one station to another,you have to pass through the first to get to the second, and points along the way can switch to send you in a different direction.

l went through bowel cancer with spread into the liver ten years ago.Timeline as follows --diagnosis to  6 weeks of Chemo/radio pre surgery==4 weeks, recovery 12 weeks to liver surgery=8 weeks recovery to bowel surgery=8 weeks recovery to 12 weeks post surgery chemo,18 months to stoma reversal.

As you can see it can be a staged process very much dependent on how the patient presents,and the type of cancer and its level of aggression, all of which is ascertained by scans, tests, before a personalised treatment plan is put into place.In my case the initial diagnosis was stage 3 on the bowel with no spread and just one inflamed nearby lymph node, hence the pre surgery chemo/radio to attempt to stop spread.However regular monitoring picked up spread into the liver,and the fact l had cancer that had trained with Linford Christie.As a result Liver surgery took precedence over bowel,and l was rushed in and had 60% of my liver excised with only just enough clear margins to make that possible,my surgeon informed me that within a further two weeks the rate of spread would have precluded this from being possible.

The thing you can take from the above is that although everyones cancer is different, their are constants throughout the treatment, treated as an individual case by a Multi Discipline Team, scanned and checked for size and type, monitored for further spread,personalised treatment plan to offer the best possible result. You cannot skip these steps, but once you are on the process you will receive and benefit from the high levels of expertise built up within teams.

For me the Liver surgery was the most painful but healed relatively quickly with absolutely no lingering after effects. The Bowel surgery was easier but left lasting after effects.The chemo/ radio also left their mark. Your mindset has to change to accommodate these changes and challenges, and l was building my own house at D day + 2 years having looked after my livestock throughout treatment. l am now at year 10 approaching 74 and am only just now noticing a slight slowdown , but this is down to older age .

l have wrote the last sentence to point out the posibilities and positiveness of treatment,it does not have to be doom and gloom, just a hard journey to come out the other side in many ways betterthan the old you that started that journey.

Best wishes for your Father in Laws future,

David

Hi David 

thank you so much for taking the time to reply like this it is very kind !

Yes I understand everyone’s journey is going to be individual.  Step by step next is the scans and the hope it has not spread - it is hard as my mother in law is also in kidney failure needing a transplant so with both of them so poorly it’s a lot for us to process and we want to make sure we are offering the best support we can at the moment we just feel very very stressed. 

from the information given yesterday best case is no spread tumour removal and no chemo needed or maybe some chemo needed after removal depending on the biopsy result.  They said not to remove and just chemo and radio is not their preferred option for him and obviously to just ignore would be silly. 

i will keep in contact 

thank you once agsin for your reassurance reading this has given us hope xx