Here’s a quick rundown: My husband was just about 3 years into remission when his CEA started trending up in February. He has had so many tests and scans since then, and it looks like he has a spot of something high up on his liver. We ended up having to go out of town to find a liver surgical oncologist who was willing to treat John as it is in a difficult location.
There has been a lot of back and forth, our oncologist wants a biopsy/sample of some kind so she knows exactly what she’s treating. There are other cancers that can appear in the liver that express CEA and she doesn’t want to give him random chemo without knowing what it is. The other team says it’s statistically most likely the same kind of tumor so to do chemo for three months and see if it responds, if not then try different chemo before taking the spot out. There is no good way to biopsy it, and if they just remove it they don’t have anything to watch. But his oncologist is concerned that with that approach John may get too sick to do the surgery, or by the time they find the right “mix” he may not be able to stand treatment (Folfox 6 was hard on him).
It sounds like they’re starting to agree with the surgical biopsy approach, but I was curious what other’s experiences have been? Is it common to treat without getting a biopsy of some kind? Or do most get a pathological diagnosis of some kind first?