I emailed the nurse yesterday morning regarding the tumor marker test. She was able to see it on her end, and when I looked again, it was there. We never did get an email saying we had new test results.

Sadly, the marker was the highest we have seen it – 78,614. Last time it was 34,470. After the first chemo round it went down to 27,959. The original test when he was in the hospital was around 60,000. We did not view this as very good news so emailed the doctor to see if anything could be done this week instead of waiting for his next appointment on Tuesday, July 8.

The doctor replied at 10:00 last night. He said that sometimes the markers go up at first even when the chemo is effective. He wants Darrel to go in tomorrow for another test so that we can make a decision on treatment change for his appointment on Tuesday.

Previously, the doctor had also said he didn’t want to depend on the tumor marker because it could be all over the place. That is why he schedules CT scans fairly often.

And so it goes…