I had a good meeting with Dr. Miller on Friday. We have to wait 4 more weeks for the body to recover to then get a CT and the CEA tumor marker test.

We had a long conversation about how to approach go forward monitoring. Dr. Miller has gotten to know me pretty well over the last 15 months and mentioned that sometimes this monitoring phase is harder mentally because you want to be doing something to keep fighting cancer and at this stage there is nothing to do. He also wants to keep stress low around the scans and blood tests that will occur about every 3 months for 2 years and then spread out from there.

For now, I will be running the full gamut of tests. This includes a CT, CEA tumor markers and Signatera that monitors circulating tumor DNA. I have mixed feelings about the last one because the test is just a proprietary score and they won't give you the more specific information they have access to, claiming how they come up with the score is all proprietary.  There is a chance my genetic tp53 marker will throw the test causing added stress that is not needed. While I am not sure how I feel totally, I chose more information, so to start we will run everything.

There is a high probability insurance will not cover the extra tests, but in that case you get a huge cash payer discount, or the company writes off the cost because they make plenty in the cases insurance does cover. The American healthcare system is wild.

Outside of shifting into booking mode for all these tests in a month, I am still trying to rest and recover. It takes 3 months for the liver to grow, but a majority takes place in the first 6-8 weeks and grow long an organ is exhausting. I am also recovering from a UTI that makes sleeping really hard. They believe all the extra fluid from surgery and the trauma on the body caused some imbalances leading to the infection which has been a fun added layer to recovery.

Now we just wait for all the testing mid-June.