Reply To: Chemo question

[marysue]

HI Eve. Sorry about your hubby’s bad news and that you have reason to be here. Welcome all the same. Greg’s advice is sound. While I haven’t had to go down the road Greg did or what your hubby is facing, I understand his feelings about chemo. I had to do BCG immunotherapy. While not as drastic as chemo for side effects it does have an adventure all its own. I really resisted the idea at first because I’m anti drug for a lot of things but I reconsidered because the only other option was to remove my bladder should it reoccur. While our situations are different the fear is the same. Fear of the unknown and not knowing if the drug will help at all. When dealing with cancer docs tend to deal on the side of caution and go the extra mile. They need to be sure that they have done everything and offered the best known treatment for a patient in order to protect the patient’s health and themselves against a possible lawsuit. For example if the doc didn’t offer the chemo option and your hubby died not knowing that chemo could have saved his life and you found out afterwards I think that you’d be pretty peed off. (Sorry no pun intended here). However that being said it is up to the individual facing the treatment to ultimately decide what is right for them. I suggest that you try to get him to sit down with you and discuss his real reasons for objecting to the chemo. Chemo is serious stuff and if it is the fear of side effects that is well justified. You both then need to discuss with the doc about the potential side effects and if he opted for the treatment how they would be managed should they become heavy. Also, I suggest asking if it is possible to wait until after the CT scan to make a final decision about chemo. Hopefully the news isn’t as bad as they first think. Good luck and keep us posted. There are lots of folks on this site that have dealt with chemo. I think that you will hear before long.