February 3, 2011 Crap!

When you have a disease of any kind that lasts long enough that you can get results on a regular basis, there are going to be good days and there are going to be bad days.  Since my transplant, I have generally been getting results every two months. For the most part, those results have been pretty good. There have been some bumps in the road, but generally the news has been good when I get a sneak peek before I actually see the doctor.

Because I am terribly anal and very numbers oriented, I have to get my hands on the results as soon as possible. If I have to wait to see the doctor, I go nuts. It’s funny. During the two month period, I really don’t think about it much, but once my blood has been extracted, I want the results. If I could get them while they were taking the five or so test tubes of blood, that would be great. When I was going to Doctor Obenchain, I would have to wait a week and drive poor Jeri crazy as I would ask her each day if the results were in.  Now that I am back at the Mayo, I can get results in a day. Thus, I just have 24 hours of clock watching. 

Yesterday, I made the hour trip up to the Mayo to have the blood draw.  It normally isn’t that bad, but for some reason traffic was bumper to bumper. I really need to get a blow-up doll to put in the passenger seat so I can use the HOV lane. It sits there almost idle since most people drive by themselves.  I understand the purpose, but it sure seems like a huge waste of concrete to me.

I waited as long as I could and finally send Dr. Mikhael a note around noon to try to find out who I could bug to get my results. Luckily he got back to me fairly quickly and it wasn’t long before the results were in my computer.

When I get those results, I look at two things, my kidneys and the level of cancer in the blood stream. The printout was a little different that I had seen in the past and the fax machine at the Mayo was not the best in the world, so everything was a little fuzzy. Not fuzzy enough though.  The kidneys were still in their normal 2.2 range. Not great, but no worse.  The cancer number was not exactly what I was looking for, however.

Because it was fuzzy, I could not see the decimal point.  I had a good idea of where it was, but I was hoping it wasn’t.  So I sent a note back to the Mayo and to my dismay, my eyes were good enough to decipher where the decimal point was.  My new number was 11.5. If this was the percent raise I was getting this year, I would be happy with that 11.5. If it was the number of games that the Reds led the second place team in September, I would also be jumping for joy.. But the fact that this was an indicator of how much cancer was flowing in my veins and the normal scale is 0.57 to 2.63, I was not quite as excited as the raise concept would have been.

To put that 11.5 number in context, my number two months ago was about 5.5. The previous test was a little over 4. The 11.5 is the worst I have had since my transplant. However, because I am now a seasoned veteran at the whole cancer game, I am not about to jump off any bridges. As Dr. Mikhael told me, this number fluctuates, the Mayo tends to be a little higher than other labs, I’ve been almost that high before and the rest of the lab work was pretty normal. With all that in mind, I’m not too concerned.

The next test is the important one.  The next test is always the most important one. It’s like getting to do a do-over every couple of months. It doesn’t matter how good or how bad the last one is, it’s the newest one that is the most important if it confirms a trend. That is my story and I’m sticking to it.

The other reason that I’m not too worried is because I just got done losing a two month battle with the cold of the century. For over six weeks, I fought that sucker.  I eventually won, but not without a struggle. The last time I had a cold, the cancer looked at it like a little vacation from my white blood cells and it jumped a bit. So, I was really expecting a jump. Not this much, but a jump, nonetheless. It seems my body isn’t smart enough to battle two things at a time and the cancer seems to have won that skirmish.

So the bottom line is this. I just had my worst blood results in 19 months, but I’m not too worried about it and you shouldn’t be either. Nobody ever said that this was going to be easy. I just view it as another challenge that I plan to meet head on.  I feel great, so it is not having too much effect on me. That makes my job a lot easier and there is nothing I enjoy more than an easy job!

I plan on starting a regimen of CoQ10 tomorrow.  There has been some research on the value of this naturally occurring supplement and its effect on cancer. The information below was taken from NaturalNews.com:

“Inspired by these results, Japanese researchers at the National Cancer Center Research Institute in Tokyo wondered if CoQ10 could even prevent cancers from beginning and proliferating? They used a deadly carcinogenic chemical, azoxymethane, to induce colon cancer in rats. For one month the animals were fed a defined unsupplemented diet, while another was fed a diet containing CoQ10. The results were remarkable. At the first signs of colon cancer in the rats, they found the cancer was less than half that in the unsupplemented group. This led scientists to conclude, ‘CoQ10 may be an effective chemopreventive agent against colon carcinogenesis.’"

Now I’m not going to compare myself to a rat, but this and other studies lead one to believe that there may be some value. Coincidentally, during the time that I had my two best blood tests I was taking a supplement that we sell at Isagenix called Ageless Actives.  I started taking it because it was a combination of resveritrol, Vitamin D and CoQ10.  There was a clinical study taking place at the time involving resveritrol and Multiple Myeloma and I thought it might do me some good.  However after the four months, Julia noticed that the resveritrol study was stopped because there were some findings that it was causing kidney damage to the participants. As a result, I stopped taking it.

In the end, it might have been the CoQ10 that was helping my results. So, I am going to become my own little lab rat and see what happens. I ran it by Dr. Mikhael and he gave a thumbs up. We see what happens over the next two months.