scanned

My wife had a PET with high resolution, triple contrast CT scan done, it's 53 months since diagnosis. We're hunting for a met. Four radiologists' signatures, and then an outside reread, can't find anything.  "Our" radiologist mentioned, that (52 mo ago) he checked with the oncologist at a well known cancer center, who said "24 months, tops".  So, "good news".  

Reality is that we've been fighting sharp but limited elevations of biomarkers and coagulation for over a year, with some successes toward getting the evil genie back into the bottle, several times more slowly.  CEA, CA199 and LDH jump after treatment reductions of critical adjuvants. Every time those markers jump and continue to rise, we have to jump sideways, higher.  

CEA and LDH are now back to earlier baselines but CA19-9 is still hung up, at over 40, almost double the 1.5 yr of a good, steady baseline CA199 that followed 2nd surgery, over three years ago.  Her blood numbers are otherwise pretty normal at this time but somewhat eroded with some instabilities. The erosion and slow changes suggest we still have to improve our game to mantain her low residue cancer status, with a high quality of life, to stay ahead of things and not fall off the boat.    Our experiments continue, slowly.  

Our scientist daughter gets married next month to the guy of her dreams (skier, 6 ft 2, eyes of ...).  They started dating the year after her teen, first gene transfers...he has his own proposal.  Thrilled mom, to sail this far beyond the sunset.