August 6, 2009 Close But No Cigar

I did everything that I could but I couldn’t get Dr. Mikhael to say the “R” word. However, I am inching closer. There are three things that they will check before they will label me as in remission and I have to wait another five weeks before they will do the last. The other two are looking pretty good, though.

As I have stated before in this blog, I have watched a million hospital and doctor shows. I feel that for a layman, I can understand a decent amount of what they talk about. Yet, I have managed to get lost in some of the technical lingo with respect to multiple myeloma. This, will, however, make it a little easier for those of you that have not watched nearly as many doctor shows as I have.

MM causes the creation of protein in the bone marrow and bloodstream that just don’t belong. Some of these would be referred to as long chain and others as short chain. Not all Myeloma sufferers are lucky enough to have both. Of course, I am. I didn’t know this, but my first 16 chemo treatments completely wiped out the long chains. Take these numbers as relative, so don’t worry about what unit they represent. Before the chemo, I was at 0.4 and now I am at 0.0 which means that that portion of the cancer is gone at this time.

The short chains are a little tougher. Before my first chemo, these were at 65. After the 16 sessions, it was down to 12. After not taking the chemo for five weeks, this had jumped back up to 40. I didn’t know these exact numbers, but I knew there had been some significant growth. This is what was causing my recent sleep deprived nights. If it grew that fast in five weeks what would it do in nine?

The good news is that it has dropped to 8. A normal person (and I’m not sure how many of you are normal if you are reading this) can be up to about 2.3. The fact that it is that close to normal is great. However, they like to see at least a 90% drop, so I have just a little bit of work to do and Dr. Mikhael stated that it was possible that there could be some additional improvement in the next month.

The last test that I will have to pass is the 24 hour urine collection. This will check to see how much protein there is in mine over a 24 hour period. A healthy person should have none. Before treatment, I had over a full gram in my first test. When I entered the hospital for the transplant, it had dropped to 0.365 grams. It needs to be under 0.1 for the “R” word to be utilized. Again, Dr. Mikhael is very confident that I will be there.

The other big news is that I get to go back to work on a limited basis. So much for sitting around the house in my underwear, unshowered. There always seems to be a price to pay with progress.