Question on reccurrence

lisa42 said:

yes, it's possible
Hi,

Sorry to hear about your sister's recurrence with the spots in her lungs. Yes, it is possible to have normal markers and still have active cancer. The CEA marker has always proven very accurate for me, but it definitely is not for everyone. I have a friend who lives near me (she doesn't go on this board) & she recently suffered a recurrence- went from stage III to stage IV when a very large abdominal tumor was discovered, as well as mets in her liver and lungs. Even with all that, her CEA marker was under 3.0. Her markers have actually always tested normal every time since her original diagnosis in 2008.
I guess that's why not all oncologists rely on CEA numbers. They just need to test it a few times I guess and see if it correlates with the scans or not.

Do take care and I wish your sister the best in this upcoming fight.

Lisa

i agree
i was just dx with recurrence with mets to my liver.i had cea checked in august and it came back normal.now with a cat scan done 19th of janurary i have 2 spots on my liver.just had another cat scan with cea checked and waiting results.good luck to you and best wishes to your sister...Godbless...johnnybegood

Gail78 said:

Wow that's frustating to
Wow that's frustating to know! I was hoping that her cancer markers being normal was a sign that it might not be cancer again Oh well. At least she's a fighter and has a lot of support. Just so hard to see her have to go through chemo again. She had a really rough time last year.

Thanks for your posts.

So sorry to hear about your sisters recurrence
the beast sucks, but when it comes back it is like a slap in the face after fighting so hard and getting on the NED side of it.

I had been NED for 2 years and had my CEA tested in Dec 2010 and it was really high, so hight that my onc thought the lab made an error and reran the test, still high, so I had a PET and found lessions on my liver.

Your sister sounds like she is a fighter

GrannyC

taraHK said:

sorry - possible
I am very sorry to hear about your sister's recurrence.

I am one of those people for whom CEA wasn't a good indicator. Mine was not elevated when I was diagnosed, and not elevated when I had recurrences (three times).

More recently, my CEA did elevate (and indeed, I had another recurrence). My oncologist thinks my cancer has now mutated.

I wish your sister all the best.

By the way, my first three recurrences were all lung. They were treated successfully. Lung mets sound very scary -- but it's just another part of the body -- and good treatment is very possible.

Tara

Gail78
I was dxd rectal cancer 3/15 08 and had surgery to remove all surrounding area....After 2 years of monitoring CEA and other blood test indicators my CEA started to climb...went from 1.4 - 1.9 - 2.1 - 9.7 - 10.4...These last 2 readings were in the last 2 weeks during the weeks of about June 5th through June19th...What I am getting to is that my growth on my lung (which turned out to be a met from Primary) had already reached 1.4 cm size (about 3/4") and CEA didn't start climbing way after that....I thought then that if I had been scanned earlier than 2 years later, then most likely it would have been a different treatment option or maybe more minor than removal of 1/2 of my upper left lung...it was however a complete success in which no nodes were involved and all margins were clear.
BUT !!! It could just as well have been a benign growth...You see we all have certain spots and clumps and certain densities in our lungs. The fact that they started growing gets to be a concern, I think for the most part that regular scanning allows them to keep an eye on the items (sounds like a shopping cart story) that we have in our lungs and make sure that they stay where they are and not grow. My growth had been there a while to reach that size and in my mind I think that a scan would have picked it up a lot earlier. Different outcome ? probably not, but my big issue about it was this...What if my CEA never rose to call attention to it ? There's where my issue is. So as the Beverly Hillbillys use to say "So they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly"..well, I loaded up all my paper work and scans and moved to Nashville...and doing fine....Lung Surgery...well, hurts like hell the first 4 days, then it gets better everyday...(it hurt for me because the epidural they put in came out the second day post surgery and they didn't see it until they were sending me home) its a battle story, but that battle is over and won...I've won 2 battles, and Im gonna win the war as well.......Love to ya, buzz