Knocking Good

It’s been a long time since a blog post.

In the meantime, it has been more of the same, which is actually pretty good. Since I stopped taking the steroid (dexamethasone) that I seem to be allergic to, I have continued on my pricey Revlimid chemo pills, 14 days on and 7 days off. The good news is that my hemoglobin number is up, though not to normal range, and my other blood test numbers are inching and creeping and improving. My doctor says I will not be considered to be in remission until all the numbers are in the normal range, so we have a ways to go yet.

Better blood numbers mean more oomph and energy, more time up and about, and less time in my chair. So instead of resting in my chair one fine fall day a few weeks ago, I was out cutting weeds. That’s when I ran into the yellow jackets’ nest!  I didn’t really appreciate the several stings, nor the midnight trip to the ER, but it is nice to be out of the chair more often.

Also, as you can see, we were able to take a week and head east to Pennsylvania, tour the Harley-Davidson and Martin Guitar factories, among other things, and even knock on groundhog Phil’s door.

That about covers the current situation. You can stop reading now, unless you would like to delve with me into some more of the complexities of the disease.

I recently listened to an interview with Dr. Rodger Tiedemann, a researcher at the University of Toronto, which helped me understand how a myeloma patient might be in remission, but not cured.

Dr. Tiedeman describes why the new multiple myeloma drugs are useful to treat myeloma but will never be a cure for myeloma. He shares how they are more like a persnickety goat, eating the weeds and flowers of the myeloma, but never touching the root. As I understand it after listening to the interview, the drugs are pretty good at killing the mature myeloma cells, but not so good at killing the very young cells that will become myeloma cells, the progenitor cells. Eventually, these cells mutate and find a way around the drugs. This explains why the drug you were taking that was effective becomes ineffective. That’s why patients go through a series of drugs. (If any of you would like to listen to the interview it is at: http://www.mpatient.org/dr-rodger-tiedemann/  There’s a fair amount of technical talk, but every now and then, he boils it down to understandable concepts.

For now, I’m thankful for the effectiveness of the Revlimid. It is helping me. Amid the healthcare debate, I am immensely thankful that retired folks have superb care through medicare, which pays for my doctors, my many blood tests, x-rays, bone marrow biopsies, and those $500 Revlimid pills. I wish everyone had access to that kind of care.

And I am thankful for a good quality of life and a strong faith in spite of having a currently incurable disease. Life is good. God is good. Family is good. 

Even Punxsutawney Phil is good. And I look forward to another Ground Hog Day!