I also want to mention to you that I am a registered nurse and therefore did ALOT of research before I made this decision. It was a hard decision but after reviewing research documents and speaking with doctors that I have worked with and my own specialist who said he would have the transanal exision I decided to do the excision. I just want you to let your dad know that I and I'm sure none of us that did the excision make the decision lightly. We're hoping that some day soon the excision will be the new "standard of care" for early colorectal cancer. If you google
colorectal cancer + transanal excision
you will get some of the research articles and you can see that the overall cure rate (especially for stage I) is really high. As a nurse I've dealt with colostomys and I could live with it but I'd rather not if the chances of survival are only a couple of percentage points different.
Let us know what happens either way.