My dad was recently diagnosed with stomach cancer on 4/30/08. He has had a CT scan and a PET scan since. The PET scan results were better than the CT and currently the cancer is localized within the stomach with a possible 1 cm met to a lymph node. We have 2 options in moving forward and I would like to solicit advice:
1) direct surgery to remove the entire stomach, then chemotherapy after my dad recovers from the surgery
2) pre-operative chemotherapy/radiation for 6 weeks, then surgery, then more chemo/radiation
If we opt for the second option, we have to do a laparoscopy biopsy first which we cannot do until 5/29 (due to the surgeon's schedule) to determine if the 1 cm lymph node is indeed a met. Then, we would schedule the chemo or surgery which may not happen for another month! We're concerned with the lag time as we don't want the cancer to spread any further. But at the same time, I've been reading that doing chemo before surgery is a good way to shrink the tumors and prevent any further spreading.
At this point we are feeling that option 1 would be best but we we want to make sure we choose the best option since this is a huge decision. Any suggestions to this would be much appreciated.