Today was testing day. My first follow up scan since the August scan showing that the LONSURF was working.
I have a copy of the scan and the blood work is back.
The main blood work indicates that my WBC and Abs Neu are low. Low enough that I would be one of those people wearing a mask even without COVID in all likelihood. And borderline kicking the treatment back a week. But in light of the fact that it is working, they would have to be a lot lower to convince me to stop this cycle now that I am two days in.
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| CEA Level |
The CEA was also taken today. As I have mentioned in the past, CEA sometimes is a good marker of cancer for people in terms of tracking if cancer is growing. For others, not so much. For me it has been a good marker. The chart shows the progression of the CEA for me.
The far right is the measurement today. Holy @#$@$%6. Twice the level of any other measurement I have had. But the key thing (and what I am hoping about) is that in addition to cancer spreading/being active being a cause in a spike in CEA, there are other things that can do it. One of the things that can cause the spike is that chemotherapy is working and the cancer is getting knocked out. The orange arrow shows the CEA right before starting LONSURF. It had slid down a bit from the first post-FOLFORI CEA (light green). The measurement immediately to the right of the orange (a bit over 14.2) was a couple of days before the scan which showed that LONSURF was working on shrinking my tumors. Today the CEA is almost double that amount.
I looked at the scan today when I got home. Despite my extensive training as a radiologist, which consists of asking for discs of my scans AND staying at a Holiday Inn Express multiple times during the last 6 years, I am not great at reading them, though I can do okay. I saw the blood work before looking at the scan. So I am sure I was biased in trying to figure things out. It is either the cancer is going nuts or is continuing to get its butt kicked for the time being. I really think it is the later. But I am trying not to get too excited. The last almost 6 years have taught me one thing - anytime I think I may get good news, I get slammed. So I am going with cautiously optimistic and will know for sure from people who know these things.
I trust them to read these better than I can, even though they went to and/or teach at Brown, Cornell, NYU, Harvard and other places. Not one who stayed at Holiday Inn Express or pontificates on social media or TV. But they seem to know what they are doing despite that.
