Chemotherapy: The Shot Felt Round the World (Red)117different thing from surgery. In surgery, there is an operation, a pathology report, and a course of action. When surgery is completed, there is a deitive result: how many tumors were found, how big the tumor or tumors are, whether her lymph nodes were infected by cancer cells. It mathematical, precise, calculated. Chemotherapy is anything but that. Sure, there is a regimen of drugs that the oncologist decides to use to ht the cancer cells. But how effective that regimen will be can be verid until years later, unless the chemo is used before surgery, when the effects are seen immediately. Many of the oncology drugs have been around a long time, but oncologists are just beginning to learn about the new world of targeting drugs. And what they are learning is that each cancer is different for each patient. So, what works for your loved one may or may not work for the next woman. That means that new chemotherapy regimens are constantly being devised and revised with each new study published. That why it would be impossibleo, negligentor me to get into a detailed discussion of the various chemo treatments available; as soon as I mention one drug, it will be replaced by another. There is always a new clinical trial, a new approach, a new regimen that doctors think will work better than others. As there is so much to process when it comes to chemo options, you should encourage your loved one to take the time to understand what the best treatment is for her, and to make sure she isn rushed into a medical decision by her physicians. The regimen she selects is a critical decision for her future prognosis, and so it must be thought out methodically and patiently. Likewise, picking an oncologist is like picking a partner. She is going to see that doctor for years, if not decades, so there has to be trust and conence. My wife found out after surgery that she had ten positive nodes, three tumors, and an aggressive form of cancer at the young age of forty-one. That rather bad news, so she wanted to make darn sure she picked the right chemo doctor. She interviewed seven of them, either in person or on the phone. She met oncologists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, at Cornell, at Columbia,
