Violence Girl

Yesterday I got the results of the second HE4 test- 37, a few notches down from the last one.  This is good!  So today I wasn't too nervous waiting on the exam table for the oncologist to arrive with the results of the latest CA125.  This is lucky, because as I waited, I read the passage from Alice Bag's autobiography, "Violence Girl", describing her sister's last weeks filled with unbearable pain before dying of cancer...  It's a great book, if you can't find it at your local bookshop, go buy it here.

Anyways, I did get my CA125 results, and it went up a little AGAIN.  Not thrilled.  It went from 31 to 38.  The doctor still isn't too concerned and we are once again in wait and see mode.  He said that my type of cancer doesn't hang around increasing in small amounts, that by now we would have seen a large spike in the numbers.  I would prefer to have zero indication of anything happening, but fine,  I'll take these creeping numbers and another 3 month reprieve.

HE4, part 2

I got back the results of my HE4 test- 40.  


This is a multi-step process.  The first step is that it is under 151.  Check!  The next step is that it doesn't increase with serial sampling.  If it increases 25% each time, it's a good indicator of disease.  If it doesn't, there's a 70% chance of no disease.  


I do the next HE4 in 3 months.

HE4

I'm back from the MD, and as we suspected, there wasn't a whole lot to learn.  On the positive side, today's physical exam didn't find anything, so that's good!  He had me do a different, relatively new blood test, a biomarker called the human epididymis protein 4 (HE4) that may show more details about what's going on.  I'm also doing a few other routine tests coming up to rule other things out.  So pretty much it's back to hurry up and wait.  My MD doesn't believe in starting treatment based on CA125 results, makes sense to me!  


P.S. The epididymis is part of the male reproductive system, I haven't quite figured this one out yet...

31

CA125 up 2 more in the last month.  The nurse mentioned that it was odd that it was increasing in such small increments.  This gives me a speck of hope.  Oncologist visit on Oct. 5 to learn what's next.  Until then, I'm going to try to not think about it.  Yeah right.

29

Well, now we know more- it went up a little more.  29.  I don't really know what to make of this.  I've made an appointment with my oncologist a month from now.  We'll retest again and take it from there...

...26

A couple of weeks ago I got back the results of my latest CA125 blood test.  Up until now I have usually either been 7 or "under 6" but this time it was ...26.  I am not worried though since both my abdominal CT scan and physical exam came back absolutely normal.  I'm wondering if the increase was caused by the inflammation from a pulled muscle that happened a few days before the blood test.  In any case, I am being retested in a few weeks and then we'll know more.

Fortune-ate