Decisions

We talked with Dr. Francis, Kevin's surgeon, today about his opinion that Kevin didn't need additional treatment.

Kevin has been battling for days about what to do, who to listen to. The surgeon said one thing, the oncologist something else entirely. One of our priests was pushing for him to do the chemotherapy and radiation. Some friends were encouraging him to listen to the surgeon.

It's been really hard.

So I called Dr. Francis to ask why he saw it the way he did. He called us back to talk about it, then called the oncologist, then called us again.

The long and the short of it is that he's now saying he agrees with how the oncologist wants to call it and thinks Kevin should do the treatment. It's the difference between the surgeon seeing the tumor located as colon cancer and the oncologist seeing it located as rectal cancer.

Rectal cancer is treated more aggressively because of it's different abilities to spread.

The surgeon is now encouraging Kevin to err on the safer side and treat it as the more aggressive cancer.

I'm still bothered that the oncology office had not called the surgeon as the nurse practitioner said they would. There seem to be some communication issues on the oncology side of things that bother me.

But we have an explanation now and a little more information. We meet with the oncologist again tomorrow and Kevin will, hopefully, determine what he is going to do by then or soon after.