A rare bit of good news to share: CA125 dropped 9,309 points in last month.

I'm weird about CA125. Once mine went up into the thousands, I refused to worry about it. But when I get a big drop, I DO celebrate it, because good news related to my disease progression has been pretty darn rare for me this past year of my cancer journey. So I had to share this, even though I just don't know what it means. My CA125 is still a ridiculous 2042, but down from 11,351 a month ago! That drop will mean more, of course, if it keeps dropping.

My CA125 was over 8,000 on the lab draw they took just before they did the radioembolism of my the RIGHT side of my liver June 1st. On July 15th I had new labs and my CA125 dropped down in the 2,000's, and I took that as a good sign that the radioembolism was helping. Then the pre-surgery labs I had on August 26th showed that my CA125 had jumped up to over 11,000, most likely due to further disease progression in the LEFT side of my liver. I had the left side radioembolized that day, and again my CA125 has taken a solid drop. I want to believe that I am getting my liver mets under control now. I BETTER be since my liver seemed determined to kill me last winter!!

On October 3rd I'll be having a CT/PET to see what the rest of my body has been up to during the 5-month chemo break I took to have the 3 radioembolism surgeries/treatments this spring and summer. I guess that scan will tell the tale. We have to ignore the liver on the scan results, as it will be a white blaze this soon after the radioactivity. We just want to look at the malignant nodes under my arm and para-aortic region (which looked stable & normal-sized on my mid-July CT-scan) and see if anything new has popped up. I've been on tamoxifen/megace for the past 17 weeks and hope that's been able to hold me stable. But I'll know more the 1st week of October.

In the meantime, I'm going to celebrate this little bit of good news and my family gets a couple of weeks to feel relaxed and happy and hopeful. & THAT's always worth celebrating!