[oleander73]

I was quite ready to die (after stage 4 dx), but I thought "What the heck, let's give it a go. I've always been curious what it is like." It turned out to be much less horrible than I expected and nearly five years later I'm still alive.

[Turskarama]

I figure that if it really does get that bad you can just stop the Chemo.

[pixelpoet]

That doesn't undo the trauma of spending your last days poisoning yourself and feeling terrible, being remembered like that, etc. Those are dice which, prior to this test (if reliable!), I would never want to roll.

[Delk]

The expected effectiveness of chemo treatment would depend on several factors that could inform the choice a lot even before some kind of a specific test.

Some forms of cancer are rather susceptible to known chemotherapeutic cocktails and have such high cure rates (in some cases over 90 %) with chemo that you'd have to be suicidal not to take the treatment.

Other forms can be significantly less susceptible, and the prognosis can be rather bleak even with the most effective known treatments. I can see how one might not want to suffer intensive chemo for a minuscule chance of survival or to extend life by a few months.

Also, n=1 and I don't know how my experience compares to others or to the average, but my experience with chemo wasn't that terrible. Definitely not pleasant, and there's a chance of side effects that could even be permanent. But not terrible. I've got the impression that the treatments for associated nausea etc. have also improved over the decades, and I didn't really have a whole lot of that.

[glonq]

Ditto. Chemo sucks but for me it is not terrible.