March 14, 2011

The visit with the chemotherapy oncologist did not go well. (Please know as you are reading this, that the next blog will let you know that were have already been back to the radiation oncologist whom we LOVE already after only 2 appointments and that we don't care what this doctor says, we are going ahead with chemotherapy and radiation treatment, but more on that later.) Although her cancer (which is squamous cell cancer of the hypopharynx) is a fairly typical kind of cancer, he informed us it is an agressive cancer, not slow growing. Therefore, one lymph node is already involved which makes it Stage III cancer. He also does not recommend surgery to remove the cancer. He then said, " if only you were 40 years younger..." for the first time and repeated it many times during the visit. The throat is also a hard area to treat because of the nutrition issues. He said she needs to spend time with the family discussing how hard the treatments would be on her because many of the patients are unable to eat because of the treatment as well as the cancer. He said Mom is not a good candidate for treatments because of her COPD and atrial fibrillation. She would have to have a feeding tube inserted directly into her stomach to provide nutrients and fluid as she has already lost 5% of her body mass. He said it was not reasonable to put her through too much at her age. He again said that the chemo drugs would be hard on her even if she was 40 years younger and that we have a complicated problem on our hands. He wants to talk to her radiation oncologist again and that he has a "to do" list of things that need to be done and reports he needs to see before he will consider treatment. He said there would be no formal follow-up with him yet and basically I felt he sent Mom home to die. As Kip said, "you're damned if you do and damned if you don't" have treatment. I called the radiation oncologist the same day I heard the audio version of this appointment as I was out of town during spring break and did not attend this appointment in person. We scheduled an appointment with her radiation oncologist and I will tell you more about that in the next blog.