More movement, wrong direction

It's been a while again since I've last posted.  That's good!  At the end of 2013 CA125 was 12 so we went back to checkups every 6 months.  It seemed like a long time, but honestly I didn't think about cancer too much at all.  Last week the blood test on May 2nd showed the numbers up to 35, we retested on May 7th, up a bit more to 41.  The plan is to retest again in 4 weeks.  My onc is still saying he doesn't think it's ovarian cancer, but it's hard to not worry... 

Mice

More results- CA125 went up only by 1 this time, and last month's HE4 went up, but nothing that concerns the oncologist.  After talking about my latest test results, he asked if I had been around mice lately.  A very strange question!  He is wondering if I am having a Human Anti-mouse Antibody reaction.  When he said this, I had visions of Tom and Jerry and I wasn't sure if he was being serious or not.  But apparently mice antibodies are used in some treatments and radiology tests (not too sure about the details yet) and these can cause the CA125 test to show as elevated.  So my next blood test in 3 months will include one looking for the HAMA response.

An unrelated coincidence I'd like to note- I sat reading my book, Siddhartha by Herman Hesse waiting for the doctor.  The current intern came in to introduce himself, and guess what his name was?  Yes, it was Siddhartha.  

Good news this time

The rollercoaster ride is  p
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CA 125 went from 38 all the way down to 27!  HE4 results not back yet, but I'm suspecting it will go down too.

(This blog has really just become a way for me to track my numbers, since I can't remember things anymore.  Sorry for the tediousness.)
   

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.