Postby rp1954 » Mon Dec 31, 2018 1:31 pm
The question is whether you are in the stage 1 majority that will not recur without treatment, or not. If not, what would be the best diagnostics and treatments now or, overall ? It is possible that there are nonstandard preventative answers - that residual odds can be shifted, like treating hypoxia, inflammation and other biochemical targets with mild or natural treatments. One important biochemical clue is always missed in the US, CA199 tissue stains on the tumor pathology.
Getting more predictive answers specifically for you, soonest, requires more resources with better timeliness, technical support capability and handling than are typically made available. I never found a single commercial source, a "one stop shop". Various partial resources are available with their own limitations. For us, some simple blood tests added on, were useful.
Standard practices reflect a certain balance of effort, cost, convenience, technology, risks, anxiety tolerance and path dependency. It is possible to do better, but it requires substantially consistent outperformance of support to clearly do better. That is, improvements in 1-2 areas might be defeated by a failure (lack of superior answer or performance) in another area.
Examples:
Even if a problem is identified 6 months earlier, are they really prepared enough to substantially improve your quality of life and lifespan much less do a curative treatment?
We found that most doctors (using standard practices) were not, and had to find someone special to do a major surgery that was typically considered futile. We also had to do better than standard practices on monitoring and (immuno)chemo. Yet, their futility assessment was perhaps valid for standard practices, for their normal constraints and practices - we had to improve things in several places. Also the surgery we got is now somewhat more recognized 7 years later but still likely often missed.
Even if a problem is identifiable 6 months earlier, are you really prepared mentally for additional monitoring, like "scanxiety" for each test and small changes, or that your monitoring is more invisible (e.g. monthly blood tests reviewed quarterly but professionally monitored continuously, more incisively).
Most people will suffer some anxiety, that sometimes might be detrimental, if they see extra monitoring without reassurance, perceived benefits or improvements along the way. In our case, we could better see improvements right off the bat; when things were worse, make improvements to the drugs and nutraceuticals.
Several simple, useful blood tests are typically missing in the initial surveys before and after surgery without chemo/radiation: CA199, LDH, hsCRP, ESR, ferritin, ceruloplasmin, 25-hydroxy vitamin D. The first 4 tests we found useful, added on a +-monthly basis. If CA199 is less than 2, more CA199 tests are not going to be useful; if CA199 is over 19 to 22 despite low inflammation levels, it has more potential as a marker outside of heavy chemo affected periods.
watchful, active researcher and caregiver for stage IVb/c CC. surgeries 4/10 sigmoid etc & 5/11 para-aortic LN cluster; 8 yrs immuno-Chemo for mCRC; now no chemo
most of 2010 Life Extension recommendations and possibilities + more, some (much) higher, peaking ~2011-12, taper chemo to almost nothing mid 2018, IV C-->2021. Now supplements