I've known a few people, close friends parents and a family member die of cancer. You can struggle on through chemo and radiation therapy for 4-5 years or you can go in 6 months. I'm not sure I can say which one is best. The ops are by no means magic cures, if you survive the op you are in a lot of pain from chemo and radio therapy. Example, Morphine sickness is pretty horrific. Quite common for people to reject it and take the pain because you feel so bad on it.

Having seen that and if I knew that I had a cancer which was very unlikely to be cured I would definitely consider not going through with the surgery. Better to die quickly than live in constant pain for another 5 years?

Its easy to make the stretch to trying a bit of alt medicine. It's is not going to make things any worse than they are, if anything the placebo effect of feeling you are in control is probably quite strong.

I don't think it's easy for a healthy person to understand what's going through someones mind when they're faced with this.