Postby skb » Wed Jul 21, 2021 1:45 pm
Hi beach rise,
It was a Siemens CT machine. My blood test and CT tests are usually scheduled the same day, the CT following the blood test. This time, the blood test was scheduled after the CT. So the blood was drawn within 10 minutes of me getting a contrast injection (isovue 370 128mm). European hospitals recommend that blood draws be done at least 24 hrs after contrast injection. Some scientific papers suggest at least a 4 hour wait. I am hoping that the CEA was a false result because of interference caused by contrast dye with the assays used to measure CEA. The lack of such patient stories in this forum means that this is very uncommon.
But could just be a real rise in CEA from 2.1 in Jan'21 to 15.6 now (July '21). Sometimes the cancerous nodules or lymph nodes are invisible in CT scans until they reach a certain size. I am hoping that is not the case but it is certainly possible. It is also possible that some new tumor is present somewhere else in the body that was not covered by the scan done on the same day. As you might be aware, sometimes there are differences in the way the images are interpreted by different individuals. I might also request my oncologist to have my scans interpreted by someone else.
At the time of diagnosis in 2017, my CEA was <0.5 and the the doctor said that my CEA marker was not a good indicator of disease. It did not change during chemo or after treatment. However tumors and diseases change over time (especially with mets) and the CEA that was non-expressive in 2017 could have become expressive now.
skb
Last edited by
skb on Mon Aug 09, 2021 11:07 am, edited 2 times in total.
3/21/17: Dx T3N0M0-mid rectal 4.5cm
4/18 to 5/22/17: chemoradiation- Xeloda and daily radiation (25 doses)
6/28/17: clean biopsy, clean scans
8/17: MRI - no evidence of tumor, no surgery, starts wait and watch
8/17 to 12/17: Folfox
8/19 VATS - 1cm lung nodule
7/17/21- Clean CT, CEA 15.6 !
8/24/21- PET , biopsy finds met along obturator lymph nodes
10/1/21- Surgery , 12 rounds of FOLFIRI -ended 4/22
4/15/22, 9/6/22. 1/20/23- Clean scan, normal CEA
10/23- four sub-centimeter lung nodules, all PET negative