Conversation: The conversation between human and AI assistant.
[|Human|] My friend is in Bosnia-Herzegovina and scheduled to return to the U. S. in mid-July.  He was diagnosed there with a malignant tumor  (2.5cm and about a year old) in his upper colon.  His concern is waiting until mid-July to return for a doctor in the U. S. is too long to wait (as a general rule).  The BiH doctor felt there was no problem with the time frame, but my friend is unsure.  Thank you for whatever light you may be able to generalize about.  He is 65-yoa and normal wt.  Never had any surgery or serious illness.
[|AI|]  Hi, Thanks for writing in. It is important for your friend to have a complete imaging follow up at Bosnia and make sure about the stage of disease. He must get a biopsy done to confirm the diagnosis. Following that if he is having stage I disease then he can be allowed to wait for about a couple of months. If he has disease stage II, III or IV then he must return to his US doctor immediately and treatment started at once. Any cancer patient appears normal in the initial phase of cancer. Then once treatment starts, the general health goes down within weeks. This happens to almost every cancer patient and having normal general health is not a reason to delay treatment is he is in later stage of the disease. Please do not worry.