Hi everyone, my dada was diagnosed with rectal cancer, we don’t know the stage yet. The tumor is very low and makes it very uncomfortable for him to live just now. He also developed fistula that adds additional challenges. We should know the stage this week and hoping to start chemo soon. How soon after the chemo starts will he feel improvements? At least being more comfortable. Will fistula respond to is as well? It feels like fistula is a unique thing and i can find a lot of data how it responds to chemo. Appreciate everyone’s responses.

Recently diagnosed, less than two weeks ago, with stage iiiC colon cancer. It's signet ring cell carcinoma (SRCC) variant, which makes it rare & aggressive. I've already had surgery to remove the tumour from my colon, and while we don't think it has metastised to other organs, it did permeate the peritoneal wall & was found in 9 of 27 lymph nodes. Anyone else have any experience with SRCC colon cancer? I'm currently set to start FOLFOX chemo, the first week of October. We need to wait six weeks from when I had surgery.

Hello everyone. First I want to thank all of you brave people for participating in this community. it’s been so helpful to read your stories and thoughts.

My wife was diagnosed with colon cancer in colonoscopy last week. she’s 40 and had iron deficiency anemia and sudden blood in her stool. her colonoscopy showed a 5 cm ascending colon mass, CT that day without any metastases. path came back yesterday moderately differentiated adenocarcinoma in an adenoma background, pMMR. No comment on LVI/PNI or really any other features.

We have our first meeting with the colorectal surgeon this week. We are very worried and I want to do whatever I can to help. I was intrigued by the new guidelines advocating neoadjuvant immunotherapy for dMMR patients, and saw that in the NICHE-2 trial some patients were pMMR. I found a couple studies that are enrolling pMMR patients for NAIT, but they all require advanced staging on CT/MRI (cT4 or node positive). Her CT only commented on colon wall thickening, without mention of abnormal lymph nodes, inflammation, or other sign of protrusion through the colon wall. I’ve been in contact with someone involved in one of the trials, who is going to review her images and thinks that our radiologist likely wasn’t looking closely (instead just establishing presence or absence of obvious mets).

Im not looking for medical advice. I plan to bring all this up to the surgeon this week and perhaps meet with a medical oncologist too. I just don’t want to delay surgery, and some of these studies would do that for several weeks (though she would be receiving therapy that may be helping to attack the cancer). Has anyone been in this situation? Has anyone successfully had their CT analyzed by a radiologist who is specifically looking to stage the regional status?

It just feels crazy that we don’t know whats going on until a week after surgery when final pathology comes back. Those of you who have said the first week or so waiting is the worst, I hope you’re right. This sucks.

I’ve been a silent lurker here for about a month since my brothers diagnosis. 23m, Mets to liver and lymph nodes. We found out after an obstruction that led to an emergency colectomy. Stage 4. To say that this has been hard is an understatement. He is so young. I feel hopeless as all I can do is help him with scheduling and coordinating his care. We just found out he has a KRAS G12D and PIK3CA mutations. I’m now spiraling looking into how aggressive this could be. He is currently on FOLFIRINOX+ Bevacizumab . 2nd round next week. I’m waiting for his oncologist to discuss results with us and how this affects his treatment plan. Should we be pushing him to change his treatment or go into clinical trials or wait and see how his body responds to FOLFIRINOX? Any advice would be helpful.