Hi LaurieAnn

So sorry to have misread the gap between chemoradiation and chemo as being 4 months! I must admit though that I am also quite relieved as I WAS actually thinking your oncologist was sadly misinformed and trying to phrase things so as not to alarm you

I am still unsure if doing chemo AFTER chemoradiation is a good idea but your oncologist may have some information that I am not privy to that suggests this approach is worthwhile. You might want to tell him that you are trying to understand why Jeff has to go through all this and ask him if he can explain it to you one more time. I would also ask if you could have a copy of the clinical trial results to read (or ask for a copy for a friend who will read them and explain it to you). If he says there are no clinical trials - run, and find that second opinion. Everything I have read (excluding subjective, unscientific or just plain outdated junk publications), concludes post radiation chemotherapy does not improve on chemoradiation alone. HOWEVER, my research is not complete and your oncologist may have read something that supercedes what I have read.

This certainly happened to Alex and I with the notion of induction chemotherapy: Papers published in the late 90s concluded that induction chemo (usually 2 chemo agents containing a *platin and fluoroucil (5FU)) added no benefit to chemoradiation alone. However, once docetaxel was added to regimen, a benefit WAS seen over the old 2 drug standard and is now thought by some to be a worthwhile addition to a chemoradiation regimen in some circumstances. Maybe something new has happened in the area of post radiation chemotherapy??