cancer in unusual place.

[pud1]

my sil has been diagnosed with cancer. the tumor is between her front and back bum ( sorry for childish discription) she has only just been diagnosed and has not been told how bad it is or what treatment she will have. i was just wondering if anyone has any experiance of this as i have never heard of it before and she has already been told that it will be difficult to remove

I'm sorry for your SIL. No experience of cancer there, but I did have a big and growing mole removed from around that area, more towards the back. It was clear but I was told it could have turned into cancer, and that moles in that area are dangerous because we don't see them grow.

Good luck with her treatment.

Is the tumour on her perineum or in her internal organs?

It's removal may well mean she is left incontinent. Are they planning to give her neo-adjuvant chemotherapy to reduce the size of the tumour first to reduce the risk of damage from surgery?

This is a useful resource. Good luck to your SIL.

i think its on internal organs. she was diagnosed over 10 days ago and they have not called her back for any further discusion. she has no clue of the treatment.

That doesn't sound good.

Could she ring the resource lovelydear linked to have a conversation?

I would think that she would have chemo plus radiotherapy, as surgery in that area is normally too difficult to get good results with.

It could probably be either a type of skin cancer on the perianal (that's the posh name for that bit!) skin, or it could be a tumor arising from the anal tissue - therefore treated as an anal cancer.
Either way, it is as you say, an unusual place and therefore quite rare? What investigation has she had to diagnose it? If it is a biopsy, her drs may well be waiting for the 'histology' which indicates what cells have mutated to cause the cancer. Once the original cells are identified, then the appropriate treatment can be organised.

it is a biopsy she had and some sort of scan

The scan was probably to assess if, and how far, the cancer has spread.

I was diagnosed with a rectal tumour last year.

This is very unusual in women and very unusual in under fifties so it is often missed in the early stages, especially as the problems are in the "childbirth damage area".

Mine had spread all the way around my rectum and was right on the edge of my vagina. There's not really much space between the vagina and rectum. Mine was clearly a colo-rectal cancer and was open in my rectum. Not nice! It was extremely painful.

It depends on where it is whether or not they can save her rectum. Mine was in the rectum and very close to the anal sphincter so I had all of mine removed and I'm now a bag lady.

I had five weeks of radiotherapy before my operation, and some chemotherapy too (I had 5FU). This shrank the tumour well before the op. The standard follow up was 12 cycles of folfox, but two secondaries were found on my liver so things were a bit more complicated, and I'm still having treatment.

Let us know when you need to know more.