After you completed you chemo treatment, what next? Do the doctors exam you to see if the cancer gone>?

Usually you will have follow up visits with your oncologist every 6 months along with blood work and mammograms for at least 5 years. If your oncologist hasn’t discussed this with you please ask why.

I am a 3 years (stage II) survivor.

It depends on the stage of the cancer that you are dealing with. If it is a stage 1 there may just be follow up visits to make sure there is no reoccurence. If it is a stage IV than you will have a CT every 3 months for the first two years, if no reoccurence than the Ct will be every 6 months and than eventually if all is still clear only once a year. It really depends on how aggressive the type of cancer you have what the follow up will be. Going off all cancer treatment for some people is scary because in some high risk cases they know the cancer will come back.

My son went off treatment and that was a difficult time for us. We knew the cancer would return because absolutely everyone with his cancer had had a reoccurence. It is an aggressive and persistent disease that can lay dormant for an undetermined amount of time before showing up again. You need to stay vigilant to stay in front of it . . and it still snuck up on us. Basically, with reoccurence you are looking at disease that never really left in the first place. It was just too small to detect and took a while to regrow and detect on a CT or PET scan.

That is the one of the primary reasons for giving chemotherapy. At the end of treatment what is the most scary is the fact that you cannot see metastatic disease. It is often microscopic and has already traveled throughout the body and lodged elsewhere. Adjuvant chemotherapy and radiation to the primary cancer spot will hopefully kill off all those microscopic cancer cells before they get a chance to establish new tumor areas.