A coworker was just diagnosed with cancer which is located on the outside of her digestive tract (i believe) She has just started chemo. This is her second time with cancer about a year ago she had surgery for stomach cancer she was put on chemo after her surgery and given a cancer free report. After 6 months she was told she has it again.

I wonder why they do not do surgery on her again and not just chemo?

I just felt that they found it early enough for surgery.

Any replies would be appreciated

The likelihood is that this cancer is a recurrence of the original stomach cancer. It's probable that the first chemotherapy did not completely knock out all the cancerous cells, or perhaps this is unfortunately an aggressive cancer. Regardless, at this stage, surgery by itself would probably not be effective, so she'll need chemo anyway. If the recurrent tumor is small, it may not be worth taking it out, and they can also use it (through CT scans) to monitor the effectiveness of whatever chemo regimen they put her on. In fact, I suspect that's how they found it...through a follow-up CT scan.

Ruth