Betty writes that she has primary peritoneal carcinoma, and says: I went to doctors and had many test over a years time, when finally after being in the ER someone ordered the test CA125. Mine came back 2106 (yes, over two thousand). I am being treated with Taxol I V weekly and the addition of Carboplatin every fourth week for the past eleven weeks. My CA125 went to 395 in four weeks and now is down to 93.4 [..] The doctor states that the ovaries and any of the other organs are not involved, but I feel due to all of the above my future is very grim with very little survival time.

Betty - Actually, your CA 125 numbers are GOOD. This is because the actual number at this point is not nearly as important as what the numbers are doing. There are people with lots of ovarian/primary peritoneal cancer and low CA 125 results, and people with very high numbers (much higher than yours, even) with less - different tumors just seem to shed different amounts of antigen. The important thing is that it is coming down, and it is coming down FAST. This is very very good. I just read a study which showed that the faster it comes down the better. To measure this, they talk about the "half-life" of the CA 125. If it is reduced by half in less than 3 weeks, this is a very good sign. If it takes more than 6 weeks to be reduced by half, the long-term prognosis for being disease-free isn't as good. But these are true regardless of what the initial number was. Hopefully, it will keep going down into the normal range, and you have an excellent start.

Best wishes, and please keep letting us know how you are doing.

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