Once you diagnose the cancer, there’s no option. Surgery is a must, it’s not like buying a car -- do I have that or not have that? When you get diagnosed with cancer, be it stomach cancer or colon cancer, there is essentially one option only.
Look, here are the plain facts -- you’ve got cancer. It’s deciding how far the cancer has gone and whether I, as a specialist, can help you. Or do I refer you to a colleague who can offer you chemotherapy, or if we can’t do anything we can only manage the symptoms? It’s really sitting people down, giving them the treatment plan and staging, what it’s shown.
A lot of my patients would ask me how long do I think it’s been there and what’s the warning signs. If you delve back deep enough, probably they were just ignoring the symptoms. Unfortunately, people do ignore the symptoms thinking it’s just stress from work or they don’t worry about it because it’s not a common disease.
Also bear in mind that a lot of them don’t have any symptoms in the first place. So going back to the question, it’s really sitting them down and going through what the treatment options are.
