Colorectal cancer is a common malignancy, including colon and rectal cancer. Whenever people hear the term “bowel cancer”, they feel scared. No one can be prepared for such news. The first thing people worry about is how long they will live with bowel cancer. Many patients do experience a change in their lives after being diagnosed and treated for bowel cancer. However, this does not mean that their quality of life is worse than it was before the disease. In addition, most of the changes that patients must make in their lives are limited to the time they are undergoing treatment for bowel cancer. How long do you live with bowel cancer? Most patients are concerned about dietary changes. For patients who have had part of their intestines removed, a slight post-operative adjustment in diet is necessary. However, they only need to change their diet for the first two to three weeks after surgery, after which they should return to their normal diet even after receiving chemotherapy. Many patients are also concerned about having to wear a stoma bag after receiving treatment for bowel cancer, or the possibility of having a bowel movement.
Many patients are also concerned about wearing a stoma bag or being incontinent after treatment for bowel cancer. However, with the advancement of modern medicine, after receiving bowel cancer treatment, patients’ bowel habits may indeed change, but most of the changes are minor and patients will not be incontinent. Treatment of bowel cancer inevitably involves surgical removal of the bowel with cancer cells. Surgical suturing of both ends of the intestine allows more than 95% of patients to have normal bowel movements.
However, the frequency of bowel movements may become more frequent. For example, a patient who had one bowel movement per day may have more than three bowel movements per day after surgery. Each time is a normal bowel movement, but the volume will be smaller. This symptom will gradually improve, and most patients will return to normal bowel movements within 6 months. In some older patients or those treated for rectal cancer, it may take up to a year for normal bowel movements to resume. For elderly patients, post-surgery treatment can be combined with traditional Chinese medicine. Traditional Chinese medicine such as ginsenoside Rh2 (Protein) can improve patients’ immunity and improve their quality of life, and there is support in the literature that ginsenoside Rh2 can inhibit the proliferation of colon cancer cells, affect the activity of telomerase, induce apoptosis of colon cancer cells, prevent recurrence and metastasis, and combine with radiotherapy to increase the effectiveness and reduce the toxicity of radiotherapy. It reduces the toxic side effects of radiotherapy and improves the effect of treatment.