Cancer rarely announces itself with drama. It doesn’t break into your life with explosions or violins. It moves in measurements, in quiet clinical signals that accumulate until you cannot pretend they are noise. Since November 7, those signals have changed. The story has shifted from historical recap to real-time reality. The weeks that followed were defined by three forces: rising CEA levels from Princess Margaret, the latest CT scan results, and a deeper conversation about clinical trials. Each one changed the tempo of this fight.
Princess Margaret CEA Levels — A Different Language of Growth
Patients who live long enough with metastatic disease learn that CEA isn’t about a single number. It is an arrow. Humber River’s readings showed a steep upward trajectory, the kind of incline that shouts acceleration. Princess Margaret’s values told a different narrative. They climbed, slowed, and hovered. Not remission, not stability, but a different slope of progression. In oncological language, this is “slower biochemical progression.” In human terms, the fire is still burning, but it is no longer racing through the building. For oncologists, that difference matters. Extreme acceleration forces immediate, blunt intervention. Controlled growth keeps strategic options alive. It keeps the door to clinical trials open.
The Latest CT Scan — Not a Plot Twist, a Confirmation
The most recent CT did not bring chaos or surprise. It offered confirmation. The liver lesions are bigger. Not catastrophically. Not explosively. But undeniably. They remain in the same areas. They have not jumped into bone, lung, or peritoneum. They have not crossed into the rest of the body. It is contained expansion — a phrase that seems gentle to people who do not live with cancer, and brutally accurate to those who do. Containment is not comfort. It simply tells you where the enemy has chosen to fight. And terrain determines the weapons: systemic therapy, clinical trials, or, if treatment shrinks the disease, future localized interventions.
Clinical Trial Consideration — The Line in the Sand
When your oncology team begins speaking about clinical trials without hesitation, they are not offering hope. They are offering a battlefield upgrade. Trials are not soft alternatives to chemotherapy. They are experimental weapons tested inside real human bodies. You don’t get them because you’re dying. You get them because your disease is active but not uncontrollable, and because your body can handle what the average patient cannot. This is the reality most people never understand. Being eligible for a trial is not a victory. It is an ultimatum. It means: “We don’t know if this will work, but you’re strong enough to try.” That sentence changes you. You stop thinking in terms of fairness or “why me.” You stop analyzing the past. You begin thinking like a strategist.
Why My Physical Condition Still Matters
The part that confuses doctors and nurses is how resilient my body remains. I walk. I fast. I train. I move. My blood pressure is normalizing. My heart rate sits in a place that would terrify most sedentary patients and make endurance athletes nod in respect. My performance status remains excellent. Clinical trials are not for the weak. They are for the ones who can withstand experimental therapy without collapsing. If cancer is a war — and it is — then trial therapy is special operations. You don’t send exhausted soldiers into that mission. You send the ones who can still walk into the storm.
What This Stage Actually Means
Not remission. Not collapse. Contained disease. Slower biochemical progression. Incremental anatomical growth. A frustrating combination, but one that keeps doors from slamming shut. It means the cancer is still pushing, but not sprinting. It means the team is still debating trial enrollment, rather than surrendering to standard chemo alone. It means the battlefield is the same: the liver. Not the bones, not the lungs, not the peritoneum. The fight is still local. In chess terms, this is mid-game. The pawns are gone. The easy tactics are gone. Only heavy pieces remain. Precision, not emotion, decides the next move.
Chapter Four: Movement Over Fear
I do not believe in optimism. I believe in clarity. And clarity tells me the same thing every morning: keep moving. Keep walking. Keep fighting. Cancer only wins if I stop.