To Do Or Not To Do?

– October 2023 –

According to my doctors, if my tumor was less than 2cm, I wouldn’t even need chemotherapy. But mine was 2.1cm. What a joke, right?

So, my oncologist had advised me 4 rounds of chemotherapy, due to start in mid-October, and another 15 sessions of radiotherapy in late January of 2024.

I finally turned to the internet for information, something I’ve avoided doing since forever because I was too engulfed in my own denial.

These 2 articles that I read tells me about the long term effects of chemotherapy – that while it extends my life for another 5 to 15 years (or more, since I’m only an early stage 1 / 2A), chemotherapy could possibly end up eating into my overall lifespan. Means if I could have lived until 80 years old, chemotherapy could reduce that to less than 70.

The articles:

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20171218/Cancer-survivors-have-shorter-lifespan-finds-new-study.aspx

https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/EDBK_156160#:~:text=The%20long%2Dterm%20clinical%20importance,a%20decade%20of%20physiological%20aging.

This information had affected me so much, that I still contemplated cancelling my chemotherapy in the morning of my first session.

But in the end, I decided to go with my oncologist over the internet.

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