To fight or not to fight: Treatment w/ lower quality or none w/ shorter life

i'd like to know how many people that I have known that have been told that they have only a few months to live years ago and are still alive today.

fight on.

I fight

Never know if what you go through might help save someone later

Palliative care can be combined with the harsher treatments. It is appropriate at any age and at any stage in a serious illness and can be provided along with curative treatment (chemo, radiation, etc). Just cost more $$$

So she is fighting comfortably...

I just lost someone very close to me... they found out they had cancer by chance after a fall bruised some ribs. They were dead within a year and a half after diagnosis and treatment.

If he would have never found out and did treatment, he'd still be alive today no doubt.

Yes he would still get sick in the end, but he had 5 good years left. The treatment aged him over night it seemed.

Like everything it would depend a lot on the details. I wouldn't want to do it (the treatment) if I was pretty much bed bound or mostly sedentary. If I could function somewhere close to normal with it I probably would. The line is somewhere in between.

I'd rather just live the shorter time period while doing everything I can

Chemo treats everyone differently, from my experience.
My grandpa was diagnosed with lung cancer around March 2006, decided to take chemo, and he was gone by August.
My mom was diagnosed with colon cancer around 2 months ago and she is over halfway finished with her chemo treatments. She looks and feels as healthy as a horse.
However, my grandpa was a smoker his entire life and my mom has lived a relatively healthy lifestyle for as long as I can remember. She is still in her 40s, also.

I guess I am lucky I was told I had three months to live in 2003. Did chemo which is pain and bone marrow transplant and very very lucky.

It's a hard decision to make when you are told you have a few months left.

My mother-in-law was diagnosed with ovarian cancer when she was in her 70s. She decided to fight it with chemo, probably mostly for my father-in-law's sake as I don't think he was ready to let her go. She lived for 2 years, long enough to see her youngest grandchild (our daughter) born and have her 1st birthday. The joy on Mom's face at the hospital when the baby was born basically said it was worth it to her. I can't really say how badly the chemo made her feel, because she was always a trooper, but she still was able to do a lot of things before she passed.

Towards the end, I think the docs said she could do another round and maybe buy a few more months. But she said she'd had enough and died peacefully at home.

As others have said, you can't really say unless/until you're faced with that decision yourself. Family and whether you and they are ready to say goodbye can be a big influence on things too.