Hi all,

My mum has stage 3 bowel cancer. The tumour was removed. It was in over half the lymph nodes that they removed and was protruding onto the blood vessels surrounding the bowel wall.

We were told that when her chemo had finished they would scan her again to check everything and that this would also happen at 3 months part way through the chemo she was having.

We have just had our 3 weekly meeting with the oncologist before tomorrow’s next round of chemo and he is now saying that once chemo finishes she won’t be scanned until 6 months after her last session. Her bloods have always been clear even when she had the tumour etc so these are not a clear indication of how well things are going. 

Does this sound like normal procedure? Surely it needs to be checked that chemo has in fact worked and that there has been no further spread of anything? 

Please let me know what happened to you. I’m panicking here.

Julia