Endometrial adenocarcinoma and peritoneal NEC

@rikka: Welcome to Mayo Clinic Connect; there are many here who have experienced various types of gynecological cancers, procedures and treatments. I see you're inquiring about a specific type that has spread from the uterine lining to areas outside the pelvis and is causing swollen/enlarged lymph nodes. This is frequently very painful.

Can you tell me more about what treatment has been rendered to date and what the response has been?

After 3rd cycle of chemo (taxol and carbo), i did a PET scan and doctor said it wasnt safe to do surgery and tumor wasnt responding to chemo.. had 4th cycle of chemo last 4/7/26 and they added immunotherapy (keytruda)..

Ca125 was 800+ upon diagnosis in January 2026.. went down to 240 after 1st chemo then down to 148 after 2nd chemo... but after the 3rd chemo it went up to 1358.

Also getting thoracentesis and paracentesis every few weeks.

Hoping immunotherapy will help.

Hi, Rikka. So sorry you are going through this. Since you are getting Keytruda, please consider getting a Covid booster. There is evidence that it significantly boosts the effectiveness of PDL-1 inhibitors like Keytruda and helps your immune system to recognize these cancers. A recent study out of MD Anderson showed that cancer patients who got covid vaccines within 100 days of starting immunotherapy (I doubt the exact timing matters) were twice as likely to be alive 3 years after starting treatment as those who did not receive the vaccines. Also, try not to worry about the increased CA 125 yet. Sometimes it goes up before it goes back down—maybe while it is killing off all those nasty cancer cells. Hugs!

@juliea55 thanks for the booster info, could maybe work for a friend, who will check with her docs at MSK about it.

@juliea55 i will ask about this thank you for the info..

I believe the research that was done concerned lung cancer and melanoma, but my doctor at MD Anderson agreed that it should work for other “solid” timor cancers like ovarian (or primary peritoneal cancer, like I have). Your friend is lucky to have you!

@nycmusic I believe that having gotten the covid vaccine a month before beginning immunotherapy was a real help for me— i had a total response to just 5 treatments.

I think it helped me as well. I tested negative for microscopic disease for the first time about a month after I received the Covid vaccine. Up to that point, my numbers had been improving but I had never had a negative test. I don’t know if this is permanent, but I definitely think it helped my immunotherapy.