Hi Ak123.

First, my condolences about your brother. It's always a shock to learn that someone very close, as with the case of your brother, has a life-threatening disease!

But please take a deep breath now. A huge part of the determination of his life expectancy depends on what Stage is cancer is when he was first diagnosed.

The "expected" 5-year survival rate is different for each stage. I'm stage IVc, which has the least "expected" number of years before the disease overwhelms the bodies ability to cope.

No one can give you a definitive answer to "Is his survival rate only 5 years?" because the reality of this prognosis business is that it is entirely a matter of Statistics. Within any staging group, some will have a shorter life, and some will have a much longer survival.

And don't forget, we are all born with an incurable and 100% fatal condition called "life." And that means that NO ONE gets out of here (this existence) alive. Even if his prognosis is for 5 years, he ( or you or me) could easily die from some other event, like getting hit by a car as you walk across the street.

In my case, none of us are expected to last 5 years. But I expect that some do. I'm 3-1/2 years into this prognosis, but I fully expect to outlive that number by a considerable amount of time. I might be wrong. C'est La Vie.

Wait for the detailed prognosis from his Medical Oncologist before hitting the panic button, You may well have caught it in time and he might well actually get cured!

Try to maintain a calm mind and go into each meeting with the medical team with an open mind and avoid thinking about what you are going to hear. It could be good news, and obsessing about it now will have only brought unnecessarily grief and anguish to your mind.

And should the news be less than good, you will have denied yourself the normally peaceful mind by dwelling on the future. No one can say what the future will bring, facing it with a calm mind with no expectations will lower your stress and Cancer feeds on stress.

And sugar.

I hope this helps,

Bart