Hi All,
I am new on here and have been going through a number of threads and there is a real wealth of information. I was diagnosed with rectal cancer in February 2017 and had CT and MRI scans in March which gave a clinical staging of T3N0M0. I had chemoradiation from May to June 2017 and by end of July I had another CT and MRI scans which revealed an 80% response though the tumour remained close to the margins. I had low anterior resection surgery (LAR) surgery on the 13th of September with temporary ileostomy . My surgeon referred me for full course post-operative chemo I guess due to the closeness of tumour to the margin and also he mentioned in letter to oncology presence of extra mural vascular invasion. I have oncology clinic appointment on the 13th of November where I guess I will be told course of treatment.
I had blood tests sometime last week and called my GP this Friday gone and he said they were fine though liver (serum ALT) was slightly raised at 75 and along with bone (serum ALP) at 150, he said he wasn't worried and asked if I wanted to go for another test in next 3 weeks. Could this be due to the trauma my body has just gone through, plus had also been taking vit D/D3 and loperamide tablets prior to test?
Over the past week or so I have been feeling some dull pain in back and as of today there's slight numbness to legs particularly left but not stopping me from doing anything. I obviously got quite worried especially after looking up these symptoms on google and went to Urgent care center and after a long wait I saw a doctor who said it was reassuring that scans carried out had not picked distant spread but I did question him whether the chest, abdomen and pelvis CT also look into the spine and he did say they look into this and if anything is picked up in spine it would have been reported. Is this true? I am worried I have something in spine triggering all this? Any reassurances please? This illness just brings a lot of anxiety and have been under a lot of stress since surgery and all tensed up.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks,