My dad has advanced bowel cancer which has spread to lungs and liver. These smaller tumours have reacted well to chemotherapy and are stable but the main bowel tumour hasn't. They attempted to remove this in October however this was unsuccessful as it was too close to major blood vessels.
He hasn't had any chemo since January and things were looking positive until he had bloods in July which showed his cancer markers had shot up to 800. This is when the decision was made to operate. When this didn't work, we were keen to get him back on chemotherapy.
He had an appointment on Monday with his consultant but has been told that he cannot start chemo again until there is a clear sign of progression or he becomes more symptomatic to indicate things are changing. His most recent cancer markers came back as 625, so this has reduced slightly, however this is still significantly raised since earlier in the year.
Why is chemotherapy not available until it is possibly too late to work. We know this is incurable, however surely a cycle of chemo would be beneficial to try and keep any growth at bay. To wait until the inevitable happens just seems crazy. Is this normal practice, especially when cancer markers are so high? His markers went from 86 in February to 800 in July and now to 625. Why would these go up so much and then start to come down again without treatment?
Sorry for the long message!
