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CEA
Hi and Happy New Year! Been reading here off and on but hubby has been struggling with chemo etc. Am wondering, my husband's cea level is checked monthly and it was decreasing steadily however it has stalled out for the last month or so. Is it normal to have this while still on chemo esp. since it had been declining…
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HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE
Ahoy, SemiColons! - Sorry for being AWOL - I got out of Dodge for the holiday and didn't have connectivity. WOW - a bunch of new faces. Very cool. Anyway, from my house to your's I want to wish each of you a new year that is filled with good health, much joy, copious love, great prosperity, and profound peace. - SpongeBob…
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Surgery Date Moved
Hi All, Well as you know, my mom had quit taking her Avastin treatments 3 weeks ago in order to have the surgery that will remove her left adrenal gland, which in turn, if all goes well, will make my mom NED!!! So, imagine my surprise when we went to see her onc and do routine blood work, and they say we are doing another…
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bone mets...
Hello all, I had posted before and ask you guys about liver spot, and I got a lot of response. Thank you. The liver spot was in June when they Ct Scan me, and they said they can't do a biopsy because it was too small. So, I had the "wait and see". They waited 7 months for another CT scan, which I had it this Jan 3rd. The…
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Can't tell anyone else
I coughed up my first blood today. SCAREY! I don't want to worry my hubby and friends, so will keep this to myself until I see onc on Wed. I restart chemo next week. Have some things lined up to help with the diarrhea I usually get...naturopathic supplements and accupuncture. Just hate seeing this very tangible sign of…
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One other thing (my mom)
UGH!!! I can't talk to her about ANYTHING medical. She freaks out at the first hint of something being wrong. She freaks out, stays depressed in her bedroom for days and plans funerals every time anyone even hints cancer to her! She is the only one left in her family. They all died young. So I understand where it is coming…
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Friday Giggles
Hi Guys: Here are some giggles to help brighten your day a little :) Cheers, Ying =========================================== Male & Female Interpretations THINGY (thing-ee) n. female: Any part under a car's hood. male: The strap fastener on a woman's bra. VULNERABLE (vul-ne-ra-bel) adj. female: Fully opening up one's self…
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More rotten news and hospital fiascos
Yesterday was a long day. First, an emotional trip to the attorney to finalize Mark's will. That was tough... I met him later at the doctor. He may finally have an answer to why he's been so nauseas and having abdominal pains. Another new oncologist - third one in two months. With one touch to Mark's stomach he announced…
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My Daughter
I, unfortuately, have had another loss. Sunday last, I received a call from my mom (I was still in Holland), to say that my younger daughter (she was in a mental health facility) died unexpectedly. We are having an autopsy done, etc, to rule out medical malpractice. So, another angel is "walking with God". In a way, this…
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what next? HELP!!!!!
Hi everyone, I am now in remission and will be done with chemo in another month. I have stage IV rectal cancer, diagnosed 3/04. I am really struggling with what to do next. When I was diagnosed with cancer I was in the process of separating from my husband, working on a masters degree in marriage and family therapy and…
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Thank God for this board!
My sister called me today and said a chest Xray showed some "spots" on her lungs. She is a smoker and one of my other sisters (a non-smoker) died of lung cancer. But other than some abdominal pain, my sister has no symptoms. They've done a colonoscopy, barium, ultrasounds, lots and lots of tests and found no cause for her…
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Wonderful Info on Cancer Survivorship
Hi Guys, I just saw this on cnn.com, a section on Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Lance Armstrong join force to spread awareness on cancer prevention, detection, survivorhood, etc. There are also lot of wonderful survivor videos. It's very uplifting. And it's great to see CNN helping to spread the knowledge. Please visit…
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Stage IV Colon cancer...hope?
New to this board...hello! My husband's aunt of which he is very close to was diagnosed with Colon cancer stage IV last night. She had been having bloody stools and abdominal pain for 2 months and was ignored by doctors. They finally ran some tests and found a mass the size of a lemon on her colon. When the surgeon went in…
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Lance Armstrong - Fighting for Us
Hi All: With 1 out of 2 Americans affected by cancer, you would think that research funding should be increased, not decreased? See this article below, I copied this in from CNN's web site. You can join the fight by contacting your elected representatives. Now that there are new shariffs in charge in Congress, I am hopeful…
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My Dad
I haven't posted in a while because me Dad has had some pretty serious set backs recently. I had previously posted that we found out the night before Thanksgiving that my Dad's cancer had metastasized to the brain. We were scheduled for stereotactic radiosurgery on December 21st. Him and I went to the hospital on December…
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Change in chemo
I was dx in Jan. 05, and did 11 cycles of Oxaliplatin, Xeloda which kept everything stable. In December, we switched to 5FU, Irinotecan, Leucovorin and Avastin. I have a c-scan coming up on January 23 and, I have to admit, there is a part of me that doesn't even want to show to the scan (ignorance can be such heavenly…
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Help! scan has possible lung spots
My husband is stage 4 and has been NED for a year in February. He had the F-5 combination with Avastin following his colon resectioning prior to that with very good results on all. He was first diagnosed 5/24/05. He was 30 years old. We got the scan results this morning and they said everything looked very good except for…
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lymph nodes by lung
Need help AGAIN, had an appt yesterday to review new CAT scan and there is a lymph node next to the lung. My husbands mets have been in the liver. It is about 2cm big, any ideas about this? I did the big freak out, doctor put my husband back on oxiplatin with the xeloda and avastin and feels that this will stop the growth…
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Call me NED...
Hello Everyone, In anticipation of positive results of a yuletide CT/PET scan my sweetheart gave me a very cool bowling shirt for Christmas, emblazoned with the name Ned. Yesterday I met with my oncologist who told me what SB and I already knew, I'M NED (no evidence of disease)! I'm happy to say goodbye to Oxaliplatin,…
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kathim
Haven't heard from kathi in a while. Did I miss something,like has she gone on hols?
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CEA - This is a good number, right?
Greetings Everyone! I introduced myself several weeks ago.....and to refresh your memory I was mis-diagnosed, first told I had rectal for a brief few weeks, then told I had Ovarian and now the final answer is colorectal. So I lived by the CA 125, which is the ovarian tumor marker and that was elevated to 336, and normal is…
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re: The relentless back pain - HELP!
How many rectal cancer people out there have the chronic lower back pain? What IS it? Is it lack of muscles from weight loss? Bad posture from numb feet? Mark's last MRI scan of his spine turned out to show no cancer in his bones so that is not it. I'm perplexed. He's miserble and getting weaker each day. I'm taking him to…
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Happy Birthday to me!!!
Today is my 50th Birthday. I say bring on those birthdays. I am spending the day at the casino with my family. I hope I win. For all the newbies I was diagnosed with stage 3 rectal cancer 3/17/03. I have had chemo, radiation, 3 surgeries, 11 hospitalizations and am NED. It has been a rough and rocky road, but I feel great.…
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supplement drink - tolerance
I'm about to start a new round of chemo. My white blood cell count is not high even before starting, and I know it will take a hammering with the FOLFOX + Avastin. My oncologist asked me to start taking one of those nutritional supplement drinks (something like Ensure?, but it is called Impact - manufactured by Novartis).…
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NEW FRACTURES
I am beside myself. Very weak, very tired. I cannot walk, practcally bed ridden. I developed new fractures in the spine from doing nothing. The orthopedic spinal surgeon is now referring me into Manhattan to the New York Hospital for speciality surgery. I cannot believe this. One month I am working the next month I am…
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Many questions carryover
The link is actually on page 5 now. http://www.acscsn.org/Forum/Discussion/thread/view?msgid=120998&msgrid=3 Its been 3 days since his 2nd surgury. They found a kink in his small intestine (at the last surgery point) and a week since his first chemo. He is very weak. HE hasnt eaten anything since the 13th of december. I…
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keeping up the fight
Here is the situation: My dad finished his chemo in August for stage 3 rectal cancer and his PET scan in November showed it was back and in his lungs and abdomen lymph nodes. He was admitted to the hospital b/c of a bowel obstruction due to a tumor. He now has a ileostomy (he had a colostomy before). Onc told him on…
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High CEA
Wednesday I went in for a CTscan, blood work, onc appointment and my 3rd chemo treatment. The CTscan showed that the lesion in my liver grew and my CEA jumped from 666 to 1879 in just two weeks. FOLFOX was not working so I'm on FOLFIRI now. I can't have Avastin yet because I haven't healed from my semi colonectomy surgery…
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Pathology results
Just an update on my husband who had surgery for rectal cancer Dec. 7. It has taken a long time for pathology to come back but we finally got it and it couldn't have been better. Final pathology was T2 NO MX. After months worrying about "suspicious" nodes that the MRI showed this was great news. I have two questions 1.…
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BOWLING SHORT SITE
Just in case anyone is interested, here's the URL to a retro bowling shirt site - they will be all too happy to embroider "Ned" (or most anything else you want) on it. http://www.bowlingshirt.com/loungem/printed/?productid=65 Oh, and Stacy, if you buy one for yourself... oh, never mind... Cheers - SB