The Blood Work Is Back, and It’s Not Good (Rising Thyroglobulin and Escalating Cancer Concerns)
The Blood work is back and it’s Not Good! I just heard from my doctor’s office, and my most recent TG (Thyroglobulin) level is back. It’s 148 — up from the test they did in June (130) and up from the test last September (81), which was one of the lowest levels I have received since they started testing me. Thyroglobulin in the blood is an important laboratory test for checking whether a patient still has some thyroid present. The value of a serum Tg measurement lies in the fact that Tg can only be made by the thyroid gland — either the remaining normal part or the tumorous part. Normally, after a thyroidectomy, the TG level goes down to zero. In the five years since mine, the TG level has never gotten anywhere near zero. So we knew that somewhere in my body there were still some thyroid cells left behind. This is despite the fact that I have had three rounds of radioactive iodine, but we could not find those cells on any of the imaging studies they have done. As long as the ...