I don't know the prognosis of the OP's wife when she underwent treatment. It could be the right thing to do. Even for a cancer with a good prognosis where the survival rate is 98%, one could still be that unfortunate 2%.
I mentioned earlier thyroid cancer as one of the "easy peasy" cancers. I will mention here that I know two persons with that cancer. One sailed right through surgery and radiation, and is doing well with not much change in lifestyle, other than taking some maintenance medicine to make up for the lack of the thyroid which has been removed (thyroidectomy). Hers is a textbook benign thyroid cancer.
The other person died in a matter of a few months. His type is called "anaplastic thyroid cancer", which is rare. This acute type of cancer has a very poor prognosis. It spreads very fast, and the patient's life expectancy is measured in months.
We now have another relative who developed a different type of acute cancer that is quite rare and aggressive. The prognosis is poor, but being young she still wants to pursue treatment, which involves radical surgeries that would make everyone cringe. She is still fighting to survive. It is very sad.
PS. Some forms of cancer are so rare doctors do not have enough case histories and experience to treat them. They are groping in the dark. All they knew is that patients inevitably died. Do they give up and not try again when seeing a new case?
PPS. Even for lung cancer which is common, the survival rate is poor at about 1/2 as mentioned earlier, and even when it is detected early. However, because it is common and affects more than 200,000 people each year, doctors are still trying. Do we give up now?
More than 228,000 people in the US will be diagnosed with lung cancer this year, with a new diagnosis every 2.3 minutes. 60% to 65% of all new lung cancer diagnoses are among people who have never smoked or are former smokers. 10% to 15% of new lung cancer cases are among never-smokers.