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Jessica,
I have pretty strong feelings on this because of my experience with my liver mets. Back in June of 2001 (a little over 4 years from original diagnosis) during my 6month check up they found my tumor markers were out of normal range. Please keep in mind I was very unimformed back then! Anyway, the doc said to come back in a month and we would repeat the markers. So in July we did them again, and after a week or so of not hearing back from them, I figured no news is good news. Wrong!!!! My friend who had some experience with cancer, said to call and find out what the numbers were. When I talked to one of the nurses, she said they would have called if anything were out of normal. Anyway a few days later I did get a call and the Doctor said that we needed to do a scan. So we scheduled a CT. The results came back inconclusive because they thought it was possibly scar tissue on my liver from a problem I had back when I had my stem cell transplant in 97. So next he ordered an ultrasound. I new something was very wrong by the look on the ultrasound tech's face and the way she was acting. Next I had a PET scan and by that time, it showed that my liver was riddled with cancer. So I went from having a small spot on my liver in July, when I had the CT scan and my tumor markers were at 77, to having the cancer throughout my liver with tumor markers over 1000 by the end of September. I now know that when it is urgent Scans can be scheduled right away in days, not weeks. So in just 3 months it had grown like crazy, and I never had any symptoms except for my pants getting a little tight around the middle toward the last couple of weeks before I had confirmation.
I really feel that if I knew then what I know now and had stayed on top of things and demanded to have the scans much quicker, I would be better off today. The reason I say this is because I had to be on the Taxotere and Herceptin for 8+ months. That combo worked very well for me but it really kicked my butt toward the end, in fact I had to stop before I got to NED. I feel that if I had started the treatment two months earlier I wouldn't have had to stay on it so long and wouldn't have done so much damage to my bone marrow. I still have a very hard time keeping my blood counts up, and I haven't been on chemo for over two years. Remember, I also had the stem cell transplant which really limits the amount of chemo a person can do in their lifetime.
So for me it is important to jump on mets when they are small because I feel like I won't have to do as much chemo to get them back under control.
By the way, now when my markers start to go up even a little my Doc gets nervous too!
Kim in CA
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