Your Decision In making the final decision on treatment, nothing replaces a good discussion between you and your doctor. He or she should be able to explain to you the staging process, the tests that were done, their results and all the available methods of treatment.
He or she may present the information from any Tumor Board that was held. Or he or she can sometimes pass on the consensus of the informal consultations with other doctors that often take place in medical groups having several physicians involved in the cancer field. Your doctor should also have alternative forms of therapy in mind and should outline what could be done if your tumor doesn't respond to treatment or if some other problem comes up.
Informed Consent There are important legal and ethical considerations for you and your doctor to assure that you fully understand the implications before you give consent to undertaking treatment. Your doctor should tell you the nature of your disease and how it will behave in the future if left untreated, the treatment he or she proposes to undertake, the objective of the treatment (that is, palliation or cure), the risk of not taking the treatment, what alternatives for treatment could be considered, the risk of all frequent side effects and the risk of all major side effects, even if they are rare. Sometimes your special concerns are important to the doctor at this time. Make sure that your doctor knows the nature of your work and your hobbies, so that he or she can warn you if any of the side effects might interfere with those activities.
