Elizabeth has clear scans, improved lab numbers, and low circulation tumor cell count!
I tend to like to build into the story but this type of news seems like the kind everyone would just want me to cut to chase! Throughout this summer, mostly the last month, Elizabeth has had an MRI, breast ultrasound, CT scan, all organ ultrasound, complete blood panels, and a circulating tumor cell test. When asked about how Elizabeth is doing I would always say, “feels great but we’ll know more after all the scans”.
This past week we were in Mexico at Hope4Cancer for her follow-up visit. This was the last stop on the marathon summer of scans and test. We’ll tell more about our time there later, but now… the results.
Every scan came back with no sign of disease! The other impressive part of all of the tests and labs is how good her general numbers are as well. Thanks to all of her intentional work on diet and incredible home devices (thanks to many of your generous donations), she is about as healthy as one can get. The only number out of range was her Vitamin D levels which were getting a bit too high… which is almost unheard of in the Midwest where 85% of us are deficient. That is an easy fix. This news was cause for coffee celebration as seen pictured below.
The one test that didn’t get the exact result we were hoping for was the circulating tumor cell (CTC) test. Once a person is dubbed “Stage 4” it means the cancer is in the blood and can pop up anywhere. That means none of her doctors in the oncology world would say she is cancer free just yet. There is a blood test that recently was approved in the US that can measure circulating cells compared to the biopsied tumor and see how many there are. There are three ranges of results: negative, low positive, and positive. She was in the low positive range.
So what does that mean? It mostly means we have a baseline of where she is at. Since it is the first one she has done we don’t know where she was. Given she already had that tumor pop up outside of the breast, we believe it was pretty high before. So we think she has improved but don’t have official data to back that up. What this number will help us determine is what is working and what is not.
Our whole philosophy in this journey has been to leave no stone left unturned. The tricky part of that is many of the treatments and protocols are quite pricey. If we did every single thing recommended from the different medical professionals it would cost about $3000 per month… oof. Now with this CTC we can test every two or three months to see if her levels change. We can also slowly eliminate some of those consumable treatments to see which ones are necessary and which ones are not.
So summarize all that mumbo jumbo:
there are no tumors presently, cancer is barely detectable in her blood, and she is super healthy. AMEN