OK, I talked with the NP at the urology/oncology group. Takeaways:
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Waiting for .2ng/ml is basically their protocol for if this is a number to be taken seriously or not. There is the possibility this was a bad test result. There may also be a great deal of jitter in the numbers as I retest. What they most want to look for is velocity - are the numbers increasing slowly or quickly or not at all? If, say, I retested at .15ng/ml in 3 months, that would be a startling result and indicate high velocity, but again there may be a lot of jitter in the numbers (but that would be a big jitter).
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If I were referred to the radiation department, they’d do both imaging (PET scan) and a physical examination to look for changes since my 2018 surgery.
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The overwhelming case in a recurrence is that there’s some regrowing tissue (and this is important) in the original area of the pelvis that is still localized. If that’s the case
then they’d treat me with radiation and kill that tissue. She reassured me that treatment isn’t arduous.
I’m going to retest in December.
@nearwildheaven, thank you for the links.