Hello Friends, I have bad news to share. Early this year, the blood cancer I have had since 2018, which had been under control, returned. The cancer (called multiple myeloma) causes the bone marrow to over-produce cancerous plasma cells, which cause bone pain and damage, kidney damage, fatigue, frequent infections, and eventually death. Treatments can keep it at bay for extended periods of time, but the cancer eventually mutates. Later […]
Most of my life, even when I was a young kid, I never cared much about my birthday. I attributed that in part to the fact that, falling close to Thanksgiving, my birthday was always second fiddle (even in my mind) to the bigger holiday. This year, though, my birthday feels more significant. Probably because, but for the miracles of modern medicine, I wouldn’t have had this birthday, and even […]
A short update on my progress following the stem cell transplant: Today is the 60th day following the transplant, which means that almost all of the restrictions I’ve been living under are lifted. I can eat out anywhere, go to public events (even if they are crowded), go to the gym, and do most things normal healthy people can do (except eat good creamy cheese, like brie — that restriction […]
I apologize for the delay in posting another update on my condition. I tried a number of times, but my brain was so slow that I never managed to finish. Suzie and I met with my doctor at Stanford on Tuesday, and he confirmed again that the bone marrow transplant procedure worked. The transplant “took” and the new bone marrow is producing enough blood cells that most of my blood […]
To start off, I was overwhelmed by all of the kind, loving, encouraging responses to the last post. I love you all and can’t tell you how much your support means to me and Suzie. I’m thinking of suggesting to the Stanford Autologous BMT folks that I be hired (for a sufficient fee of course) to rewrite portions of their patient manual (available here, although I wouldn’t recommend it) to […]
The second phase of my bone marrow/stem cell transplant starts tomorrow, a difficult and challenging four weeks. The second phase consists of big doses of two chemotherapy agents, one on Monday and one on Wednesday, which will entirely kill off my existing bone marrow, and thus eliminate my body’s ability to make blood cells. On Friday, the stem cells that were harvested from my blood 10 days ago will be […]
I thought I’d give you all a short update on my status. My brain feels like it’s at 60% capacity and the days since I started this process have started to run together, so bear with me. The short version is that the past 5 days have been very difficult for me, even though, from what I can tell, I’ve managed to avoid the worst side effects of the chemo […]
So many times during the past 3 months I’ve started to feel better — and then started to hope that I’d turned a corner — only to regress in a day or two or three to a bad place again. So I’m hesitant to report that things are going much better the last 10 days, and will likely continue that way for a while. A good example of the “You […]
Today’s update is brought to you via two numbers: 33.88 and 1.1. 33.88 is the latest result from the “free Kappa light chain” blood test I take every three weeks. Because the abnormal plasma cells in my type of multiple myeloma produce an excess of what are called Kappa light chain proteins (which normally join with “heavy” protein chains to form immunoglobulins that fight infections), a measurement of the level […]
One of the things I’m finding hardest to deal with is feeling pretty good one day and then feeling rotten the next. It has do to with the shot of Velcade I get on Tuesday mornings. It makes me fatigued and blah-feeling for the next 3 days. Plus it seems to amp up my pain by about 40%. The former I understand, the latter I really don’t, my best theory […]