medtran, all cases are different. My Dad was diagnosed with lung cancer when he was in his early 70s. The doctors removed 1/2 half of a lung and Dad continued on for another 4 years. He had been a smoker from age 14 until they found the cancer. Ultimately, it was liver cancer that got him in the end.
CG: I realize all cases are different. I see all kinds of medical problems every day I work. Lung cancer survival rates are not good. General 5-year survival rates are below 50% for Stage I non-small cell cancer, and below 35% for small cell cancer, and go down drastically depending on how advanced the cancer is when found. Your dad was lucky to live so long and he did have treatment, i.e. surgical, so it must not have been too advanced when found. And was it really liver cancer or lung cancer that had metastasized to the liver? If left untreated, it won't be years. And if they aren't offering surgery, that's not good.
When patients hear the words "you have cancer," their minds tend to flip out and the vast majority don't comprehend what the healthcare provider is telling them. I went to doc visits with my oldest BIL, he didn't even realize what the doctor was saying and how advanced it was even a couple of weeks after his diagnosis, and he was a very intelligent man. Same with my mother when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I told her to make another appointment for a week or 2, and take 1 of her friends with her to the doctor, as well as have him call me (I lived over 1000 miles away). Same thing with patients that got a cancer diagnosis when I was still working in office. We always suggested they bring someone with them to the next office visit.
Farmer Jon: Somebody really needs to have a heart to heart with your friend and get the facts. My 1 BIL didn't want treatment either because he had seen Craig's other brother go through chemo. But, as he started to get really, really bad, he decided he wanted to try chemo after all. By then though it was far, far too late, he passed away less than 2 weeks later. His girlfriend (a nurse) and I had both told him when he was diagnosed that he needed to be sure about refusing treatment because if he waited it would be too late, we told him that repeatedly at first. In his case though, I found out when I started going with him to doc appointments that it really didn't matter, chemo would have just made him miserable and
maybe given him a couple more months.
Regardless, your friend is, at some point, going to be dependent on his girlfriend, you, your wife, his family if he has any, and/or paid caregivers, so it does concern and affect more than just him whether he likes it or not, and somebody is going to have to give him some tough love after he gets over the initial shock and has time to process.