rising cea, all negative scans...worried!!!!

[Colon2007]

Hi Everyone,


My husband had his cea again the other day 6 weeks after his other one. He is a stage 3 colon cancer survivor. Was diagnosed in April 2007. It has always fluctuated between 3.2 and 5.0 since he was first diagnosed now in September 2008 it was 3.9, then october 4.2, the december 5.1, january 6.2 and now 7.0. We are scared. CT was clear, PET was clear, colonoscopy was clear and all were done in the last 6 weeks.


What do we do.....my husband has an enlarged spleen since chemo which finished in dec 2007, but his cea was normal them. Now its rising and the spleen has gotten smaller since. Also the lesion in his head should be removed this month please God. It's a cholesteatoma, which maybe is causing these elevations.


What should we do, more imaging? More bloodwork... help please,

God Bless & protect you all always,

Monica

[Ivona]

Is your hubby on chemo at the present moment? Chemo will raise your CEA. Something about the dying cancer cells spewing some protein or other that raises your CEA. The other point is, that if your husband has brain tumours, this might well be the reason. Speak with your doctors, they should be able to give you some explanation.

[JAZZToo]

Unfortunately, a rise in CEA can precede the detectable appearance of a met by up to six months. You will have to keep vigilent, repeat the scans in six weeks or so and are pretty much helpless to do anything else until there is a physical indication that cancer is somewhere in the body. Watch and wait, watch and worry - so try to push it out of your thoughts since worrying won't solve anything at this time.

JAZZ

[justsing]

My surgeon told me that if my CEA started to drift up, but nothing was appearing on the scans, that he would recommend doing a procedure in which the surgeon made a small incision in the abdomen and took a small camera scope in there to look around for peritoneal metastases. Many times they do not appear on scans but can cause an elevation in the CEA.

Ask your surgeon or onc about this option.

[mardrobe]

It is difficult to know a cause in this type of situation. Linda's CEA started rising toward the end of her chemotherapy, going up to 16.5. The doctors assumed it was a recurrence and were doing PET/CT scans every 3 months. In her case it was caused by liver damage from the chemotherapy which was also causing high Liver function tests and an enlarged spleen. No cancer ever appeared and the numbers slowly dropped for her CEA and LFTs. It took almost two years for everything to return to normal. One interesting thing I noticed was that when I graphed the levels of her CEA along with the Liver tests, her Bilirubin tracked exactly with her CEA levels with both rising and falling at the same times.