I work in pathology. What they will do if it is colon cancer, is most likely remove the segment of colon where the tumor is located. That specimen will go to pathology and they will section it and look at a lot of different factors, like how big the tumor is, how deeply does it invade, and is it invading into any surrounding structures. This will give it a T score. They will look for lymph nodes in the attached mesentary and see how many are positive or negative for cancer cells. The number of lymph nodes that are positive will give a N score. The 3rd factor is the M score and that comes from whether or not there are any distant metastasis, like a liver metastasis. Colon cancer has a predilection for metastasizing to the liver. From those scores (TNM) they develop the cancer stages I-IV with also some subcategories. For example stage IV has an a, b and c subcategories. Each stage and subcategory has a prognosis. They will also look at the grade of the cancer cells, this means that they will look at the cells and see how well differentiated the cells are; meaning if the cancer cells still have some of the features of normal cells or not. If the cancer cells are well differentiated, then the prognosis is usually better. If they become more anaplastic, which is means to become more primitive then the prognosis will be worse.

I've see a lot of colon cancers in the pathology lab through out the years.

Colon cancer is very treatable. I pray for the best care and speedy recovery for her!