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Esophageal cancer and signatera
My fiancee has stage 4 esophageal cancer that has spread to his liver and elsewhere...He has had 8 rounds of chemo and has improved so much..he has been having a blood test called signatera I believe 4 times so far..it has gone from 7800 to 0.7 as of today..doctor in the beginning said he had 6 months without treatment and 2 to 3 years with treatment so this test result is promising. We have tried to understand exactly what this all means with the numbers dropping greatly..we have talked to dr but I'm trying to read more about it..am I correct that dr monitors the number even if it goes to 0 and if number starts to climb chemo would be adjusted..we have no end date in chemo just have been told for the foreseeable future he will continue with chemo..he leaves office with chemo bag Monday and returns on Wednesday to have it taken off every other week..he is feeling well enough and wants to return to work but that really isnt possible with the bag connected..he keeps saying hes not going to live the rest of his life getting chemo and not being able to work..he has 11 more weeks of short term disability and soical security kicks in..in October..I know that the cancer will come back and he does as well..I just dont want him to think that stopping chemo will get him back to work..cause he will be back to where he was in alot of pain and hardly eating and weak..I asked the dr more or less is he doing better than most or is it normal to have this test result drop so low..he said hes doing very good..I was trying to hear I think that he will beat this but I know that it was just something I wanted to hear..
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You cone see me and we'll chat. This is interesting to me... his case. I've been doing Signatera blood draws since October 2020. I admit I am curious why they were even started in a stage 4 patient where his cancer is clearly already out and about. I've seen other types of blood monitiring... for various proteins... like CEA, CA 19-9, CA 125, etc. But I did not think Signatera tests were done for stage 4s... more for stage 3s like me where it is believed that chemo, radiation, and surgery, have gotten the patient to NED status... now let's get a zero baseline of my tumor's DNA floating around in my bloodstream... and monitor from there. This is interesting to me. I'll come privately.
Gary
I’m new at this but it seems to me your fiancé is doing quite well and me having stage 4 with esophageal that spread to spine it gives me encouragement that I might be doing well 2+ years after diagnosis but still needing chemo to keep the cancer cells floating around from manifesting into new tumors. Although my oncologist says I’d more likely be on the two immunotherapy drugs as preventative maintenance since my cancer can be directly treated with those which have less side effects except for monitoring my heart via periodic echocardiogram's because one can attack heart muscle and cause cardiomyopathy in certain cases. I’ve never heard of the blood test you are referring to but my blood is monitored weekly which is why they cut down the oxyplatin in my folfox because my platelets dropped more than they should have after only 2nd round.
Your fiancé should follow his doctors advice to not risk reoccurrence in my opinion. Good luck moving forward.
relicmeister
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1 Reaction@stmj, it sounds like your fiancé is on a chemo program that is referred to as maintenance chemo. Maintenance chemo's goal is to keep cancer from progressing and typically doesn't have a specific start and end date. However, patients can decide to stop treatment or take a treatment holiday to stop treatment for a period of time.
What type of work does your partner do?
My advise to people with stage 4 is to retire if you can afford it. Doctor visits and the extra time to take good care of youself to get healthy and build up your own immune system is quite time consuming. I'm on to bucket list items. If work is what he truly enjoys and is his bucket list, then that's a good goal for him. for me with stage 4 and mets, I'm doing what I enjoy and only that. It was hard to retire, but once I made the decision, I was so relieved. I had every intention of returning to work, but after 5 months, I had to call it quits. It was easy for me to get social security disability with stage 4. It kicks in after 6 months of not working. If he works for one day, the clock resets. SSDI is fair and available to those who have paid into it our whole lives. He may want to consider it. there's more to life than work and money.
I agree with your approach to living what may remain of your life to the fullest. I too was forced to retire from my career. Initially, it was a difficult adjustment, but I eventually acclimatized to my "new" normal. However, unlike you, I was unable to avail myself of Social Security disability income benefits. May I ask, how did you succeed in obtaining your benefits. The potential extra income would be extremely helpful given that my Social Security payments do not fully cover my monthly expenses and my 401K is being rapidly depleted.
The forms were overwhelming and if you make one error, they deny. I used a lawyer. Their fee was free if denied, if accepted they get 25% of your back payments. I was approved on month 5 and benefits started month 6. Since there was no back payments, they didn't charge me anything. Very good law firm. Nyman Turkish firm. I was approved in 2 weeks.