Wondering if anyone on here has considered or has  refused treatment.   In the past year I’ve had an Anal Cancer diagnosis, gone through radiation and chemo where I had to relocate to the city for the 7 week treatment away from family and friends and needing to take the time off work.  My follow up appointment showed the cancer had spread away from the treatment site; 6 months later I had to have major surgery and a permanent stoma to cut out the cancer which has caused a drop in quality of life and requires further surgery to refashion.   Not even 6 months later they’ve found cancer in the lymph nodes in my neck and a mass at the base of my tongue.  I will have a surgical biopsy next week to see if it is a metastatic or a new primary.  Either way the oncologist wants chemo at best, radiation at worst.   I had horrific burns last time and didn’t tolerate the chemo.  After three diagnosis in a 12 month period I feel like we’re just playing medical whack-a-mole now.  I’ve discussed not moving forward with no treatment this time which hasn’t been met with great acceptance by the treatment team.  They throw “curative” around but they’ve said that the last two times and now I’m looking at quality of life over quantity. I haven’t had a chance to even recover from each bout before I’m hit with the next diagnosis. I can’t help but feel even if I do proceed with treatment, it’ll be back within a year somewhere else bring a fresh new hell.   To be clear, I am speaking with a cancer psych who is the only one who gets where I’m coming from.  This isn’t something I’ve taken lightly and have been preparing for this since my first rads onc appointment last year when he told me that due to the advanced stage of my cancer I was at a high risk of it popping up somewhere else.   Has anyone else been here and considered giving more treatment a pass?   ... View more