Update to my last update: the people who ran my blood said they mixed up the vials of blood with another patient. They offered to retest me at no expense. I go in tomorrow for my bloodwork retest. I can’t imagine how often stuff like this happens and how often it goes unnoticed. It says Mayo Clinic at bottom of my report but NP said Sloan Ketterling since I don’t know if there is a diff between the two hospitals, I can’t comment on which one made the error but it was an error nonetheless. Oh how I wish it wasn’t….<12 down from a beginning number of 301 at first diagnosis, I’d be doing the happy dance!!!! Thanks for listening and following along to my story.
UPDATE: saw the NP yesterday and she was flabbergasted as much as I was as to why my tumor marker result dropped from 76.2 to <12 but said she’d contact the lady in her office who has contacts within Sloan Kettering who ran the test to see what they will say. I contacted my NP this morning and she said they contacted SK and they will rerun the test. NP thought maybe they left the blood in the vial too long or there may have been some kind of mishap with the blood that was drawn because she has seen TMs go into normal range before but never by so much of a drop in number. Sometimes I think it’s a good thing I am such a pessimist, simply because if I didn’t question the result immediately in my head then I’d be extremely disappointed when I walked into that doc office yesterday and she said hmmmm that doesn’t look right at all, something must be wrong. Will update later if I find out what really happened. NP refused to retake the test but I’m hoping SK realizes they made a mistake somewhere and offers for me to retake it. Otherwise I will be waiting more than a month (18th if July) before knowing what my TM test result is for sure but sadly because they won’t redo this months test, I won’t know if the test was accurate this month or a mistake because numbers change all the time, but usually not as much of a gap as this one did.
I had ER+,PR+, HER2- breast cancer in 2014 with lumpectomy with 4 rounds of chemo and 32 rounds of radiation. In 2022, diagnosed metastatic to bone only. Even after treatment in 2014 my tumor marker test always ran in the 20s. Less than 38 is normal and more than 38 is abnormal. In 2020 my TM jumped to 40s so my onc ran cts and found nothing abnormal. We discontinued the TM testing and after my metastatic diagnosis began testing again. First test in early 2022, 301 followed by 150 on first test after starting verzenio and letrizole. My TMs continued to decrease to about the 50s until two months ago where it jumped into the 70s. I had began taking high dose vitamin D supplements due to a low level of 11. Had to discontinue because it caused severe rapid heart beat. On the very next TM test, I received a result of <12.0. WTH!!! Can this possibly be normal???? Even when I was supposedly ‘cancer free’ following my first diagnosis in 2014, my numbers were NEVER that low. I’m concerned that there is a mistake and I don’t see my onc until Monday. I have to wait the weekend to find out what her thoughts are on this matter so I thought I’d ask here.