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Pancreatic Cancer Recurrence after Whipple

Pancreatic Cancer | Last Active: Aug 29, 2023 | Replies (76)
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@barbara333

I was diagnosed September 30,2021 with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer that covers my major blood vessels. I was stage 4 both because of location and because of liver metastasis that was too small to biopsy. I took oxaliplatin for 10 rounds along with campostar, leukovarin, and 5fu. I have continued on and am still on the last three chemo agents. I got pretty severe neurological dude effects from the oxaliplatin that have gradually improved over the last year. I have had two PET scans that show the tumor has died in the pancreas and the liver lesions are no longer there. My Ca19-9 is 24. I am continuing on chemotherapy. My oncologists are researching what to do next. Has anyone gone into full remission from chemotherapy? What was your treatment plan?

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Replies to "I was diagnosed September 30,2021 with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer that covers my major blood vessels...."
bethf | @bethf | Feb 28, 2023

I went into full remission after chemo, though there was a diffuse area in the pancreatic bed that was of concern, but not clearly cancer at that point. I had 10 sessions of SBRT in April 22. Since then I have had two 3 month surveillance appointments with numbers good and scan not showing any changes or metastasis. However, in just the past 4 weeks I had new CEA and CA19-9 tests and tumor markers are increasing. I have been in remission about 1 year and have felt great--no problems. I still feel great, however, now tumor markers are trending up rapidly, scan is still stable, but I have converted from ctDNA negative (a good thing) to ctDNA positive (a bad thing) in just the past 4 months. I think surveillance with blood work and scans are often the next step. I have enjoyed being in remission despite the ongoing uncertainty, but now I am clearly having a recurrence and need to look at next steps. I will be asking about this in my own post on the forum soon.

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