Seeking advice

Emilieou24
New Contributor

Seeking advice

Hi all,

I’m desperately looking for some advice...

My 61 years old mom is a heavy smoker and had breast cancer 3 years ago that was successfully removed by surgery followed by radiation treatments. After that my mom refused to go to follow ups...

As she is a very heavy smoker she always had a very bas cough but last year around July it got worse so we’ve made her do an X-ray that came back clear! In her blood test we saw the CEA level was 5.8 no more follow ups after this...

in May this year she had a fall and broke her shoulder she also started having very bad cough attacks throughout the day that was treated multipul times by antibiotics that did not help. we used this as an execuse for her to do a shoulder and breast MRI in addition to some blood test. Her CEA levels increased to 13 and the MRI showed a 4.3 c”m mass in the top of her right lung.

we are now waiting for a Pet scan and another round of blood tests..

I guess we it is definitely Lung cancer right?

And how can it be that at the X-RAY we did less than 10 months ago they didn’t see anything and now there is a 4.3c”m mass? Can a lung cancer grow that fast??

also, the fact that her CEA level is 13 necessarily means it is cancer??

I know the logic answer would be to just wait to get the results back but as you can imagine i’m Very worried and trying to get as much information as i can..

Really appreciate your answer..

Thanks!

Emilie

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little_stitcher
Super Contributor

Re: Seeking advice

Hi Emilie, I'm glad you found this forum.  Most people on this forum would agree that waiting for test results is one of the hardest things to deal with- the uncertainty is soooo stressful and exhausting.  The only advice I have for you is don't Google!  I know you want as much information as possible (like anyone), but Google won't help at the moment, it will only give you lots of different worst case scenarios to mull over.  If you can keep yourself busy the time will pass, and you will have some concrete information about what you are dealing with (and not dealing with).   I wish you all the best, and let us know how things go!  love, Emily

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