The Waiting Game

Outcome of the latest hospital appointment: as positive as it could be
Movement towards finding out whether or not the cancer has come back: barely perceptible

Finally on Friday I had the long awaited appointment with my oncologist to talk further about whether the spots on my bowel that they found on the MRI scan 2 months ago are the cancer returning and spreading or not. Since finding out I wasn’t going to have a repeat scan before the appointment I hadn’t been so worried about going to it, just more keen to get it out of the way so that I could have a firmer plan as to what’s going to happen next. And thankfully that was exactly what I got.

Despite not having a repeat MRI scan before the appointment, I did have blood tests and so I at least got the results of those to give me some small indication of what’s going on. The blood tests were to measure my CA125 levels (the protein in your blood that is sometimes produced by ovarian cancer cells and therefore can be an indicator of ovarian cancer) to check and see whether or not they’ve started to rise since I finished chemotherapy nearly 4 months ago. If they’d gone up then it would’ve signalled that in all likelihood the spots on my bowel are indeed cancer. Fortunately the reverse actually happened and my levels have dropped! I hadn’t even considered them dropping as a possibility because they’ve been constantly at the same level since last September, just after I started chemotherapy. So, I imagined that I would find out that they’d either not changed, or that they’d started to rise. I couldn’t believe my ears when my oncologist said they’d fallen! Admittedly not by that much, but as any ovarian cancer patient will tell you, even a small drop is hugely welcome!

Although it was a fantastic outcome, it unfortunately still doesn’t hold a whole lot of meaning. In the appointment I sat with my oncologist and gynae-oncology nurse and went back through all my case history, which seeing as I’ve been ill since September 2005 took quite a while! What came out of it was that when the cancer returned last year, straight after finishing my first course of chemotherapy, it took until about 6 months later for my CA125 levels to start rising. So, what that basically means is that in order to be completely sure that the spots on my bowel either are or aren’t cancerous, then I need to wait until 6 months after finishing my chemo until a repeat MRI scan and blood tests can provide a definitive answer, which takes me to June.

After establishing this my oncologist laid out the plan of what he wants to do next: I will have my repeat MRI scan and blood tests in June, and then see him on 11th July to discuss the results. If the MRI scan shows that the spots on my bowel haven’t changed, either in number or in size, and my CA125 levels haven’t increased from their current level, then they will rule the spots out as benign and I can move into having normal regular check-ups roughly every 3 months, and we can also start to think about having a family (there is a big smile across my face to think about that possibility!) However, if the scan shows that the spots have increased in number, or changed in size, and/or my CA125 levels have gone up, then that’ll pretty much be a certain indication that it is the cancer. If that happens then they will either decide on the treatment immediately, or else do a laparoscopy first to have a closer look, and then take things from there depending on how the spots look on closer examination.

The last senario obviously doesn’t bear thinking about too much, but at least now I have a firm plan of action for what will happen next in either case, and that makes me feel a lot better. Like I said in my last entry, it is always so much easier to have a plan and to know what is coming next than to be in some awful limbo position. Mind you, I think sitting in the waiting room before going into that appointment on 11th July is going to be one of the hardest waits I’ll have ever had since this all started back in 2005. It feels like so much is at stake this time: my fertility and the ability to have a my own family, and the chances of them being able to continually keep the cancer away. So, it’s not over-dramatic to say that the outcome of that appointment could literally change the direction of my life. And I thought this appointment seemed to take forever to come around - the last 2 months of waiting are going to have been a breeze compared to the next 2!

Em