Chemo: Round 6 – Good News?

Here I am, sitting through round 6 of chemo. Spoiler alert – it still sucks.

We met this morning before the infusions with one of the PA’s here. There wasn’t a ton to go over – all my labs are still looking good. One set of numbers did stand out though. My CEA(cancer proteins) numbers are down. Which in theory means there’s less cancer.

These are the numbers that gave me pause and anxiety after they rose post-initial treatment. Here are the numbers from the labs since we started monitoring them – 7/2 673.3 ng/mL, 7/30 835.9 ng/mL, 8/14 645.6 ng/mL, and then yesterday 9/14 132.1 ng/mL.

132.1 ng/mL sounds good to me. Of course, standard range is 0.0 – 4.6 ng/mL but I will certainly take an 80% decrease since the initial lab results. It feels so good to know that my body is responding so well to treatment. Because treatment supremely sucks. And the emotional toll of dealing with this disease supremely sucks. But beating cancer would surely not suck.

We won’t know for sure what’s happening with my tumors until my next CT scan on 10/21, after my 8 courses of chemo are complete. At that point, we’ll talk with my oncologist and solidify the next steps for treatment. But for now, for the first time, I’m sincerely hopeful that maybe we are actually on the path to reducing these tumors to an operable size. And even if that’s not the path, I’m hopeful that my body will keep responding to medication and that I’ll be able to get in a few more great years of life.

As always, thank you for your continued love and support. I couldn’t be battling this the way I’m able to without all of you rooting for me and helping me along.

Much love,

Matt