My friend survived Stage III colon cancer. Please keep us informed...even though it seems you are in fine medical hands.
I'm not a medical professional, but it seems like common sense to me that any excised tumor would be examined microscopically for cancer. Certainly, any such report would trump a biopsy, whose statistical merit is fundamentally questionable, as you have sensibly discerned already...and which point Marija has affirmed on Oct. 26.
I would suggest that you insist that a sizable sample of tumor be preserved...for examination of the mutant, tumorous DNA, if necessary, in the future. This can have a bearing on appropriate chemotherapy.
I realize that you, like many others, are consumed with your mother's situation. Please remember to tell us how it works out. Many others might benefit.
It is my non-professional opinion that familial predilection towards colonic carcinomas is negligible, when it manifests in later life. Dr. Bert Vogelstein has published on tumorgenesis. It is a long long story. No...cheeseburgers have not been proven to cause it, either. There are countless quacks hawking prophylaxes and cures. Nothing compares to colonoscopy; this disease is almost always preventable. There are some remote risk factors to colonoscopy that spook some prospective patients, seemingly primarily men as opposed to women.
