My DF had a rectal cancer removed a year ago. He has a colostomy which he copes very well with. The surgeon was confident that they had for it all away and out of 18 lymph nodes removed and checked at the time only 2 had minuscule signs of cancer. He is 80 and they decided that the belt and braces chemo/ radio therapy wasn't appropriate as there was a 75% chance he had been cured and the risks of this treatment at his age outweighed the risk of it returning.
He has been well after having recovered from the surgery although he has been rather plagued with a mucus problem - sorry TMI ( this is sometimes a bit pink) which he has had investigated with scans and believed to be no problem. This seems to have stopped in the last two weeks.
He has had the CEA blood tests regularly which show a small increase but his colorectal nurse and surgeons seem unconcerned.
He had a routine CT scan last week and now they want to do an MRI. DF said the colorectal nurse said they wanted to have a closer look at the stump where the bowel was resected as the last scan showed there was a small opening at the top but am worried this means they may have found something.
Any one had experience of these sorts of screening tests a year after surgery? Is it common to have an MRI following a CT? I am really not that sure of the difference between these sorts of scans.