Does "normal" blood work mean DEFINITELY no cancer? - Cancer Message Board

Toot Toot · 06-28-2006, 07:39 PM

Hi there. I have been having symptoms, including blood in my stool, for about 2.5 months now. I am going to be having a colonoscopy sometime next week (probably -- depending on how quickly the insurance moves to approve everything). In the meantime, I have had some blood work done, which included a check of the SED rate. From my understanding, this test would show an elevated number if there were to be an inflammation etc. in my body. Since this came back "within normal range", can I rule out cancer?

Thanks to anyone with information!

whitewingdove · 07-09-2006, 03:26 PM

hi,
my girlfriend had sooooo many tests done including blood work and the only thing that showed her cancer was her biopsy. she had bleeding in stool too. she has a malignant carcinoid tumor in her small intestine which is extremely rare. it's so rare that they haven't dealt with it b4 so they didn't put all her symptoms together to come to that conclusion. she had a colonoscopy and edoscopy done. during the colonoscopy is when they took the biopsy. she had a barium small bowel x ray, blood work, ultrasound, hytascan. everything they could think of. we've been going thru this for 4 mos. now so we're hoping it hasn't moved bc it's so slow growing but we think from her symptoms that it's already moved to her liver. i don't mean to scare you but depending on your symptoms you might wanna ask about it just to get it ruled out. i sincerely hope all goes well.

mikosha · 07-09-2006, 03:55 PM

No,
You have to do a colonoscopy.
mikosha

Podee · 07-09-2006, 04:06 PM

Some cancers they don't even find until autopsy or during an unrelated operation. For example my father was diagnosed with colon cancer in his 80s but when they went in for the operation they found a separate strain of cancer in the gall bladder!

Luckily they removed both, some years ago, but otherwise he would probably have died pretty quickly from the gall bladder cancer before the symptoms would even have been strong enough for detection.