D + 27: Home in Five Days
If all goes well — and I have no reason to think that it won’t — we’ll be back in our own home in Kensington on Friday.
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D + 22: Slowly Better
It’s 22 days since I received the KLN-1010 infusion, 4 days after getting out of this hospital after being hit the by side effects described here. The good news is that each day I feel a little better, a little stronger than the day before. Tomorrow I’m going in for another series of blood tests. They’ll specifically be looking at the levels of my neutrophils and lymphocytes. Both are a […]
D + 19: The Cancer Killing Begins
I’m out of the hospital after getting an answer to one of my pending questions: how long would it take the novel KLN-1010 product to turn my normal T-cells into cancer-killing CAR-T cells? The answer: About fourteen days. That was the delay between the date I got the KLN-1010 infusion and the date I started to experience the “Cytokine Release Syndrome” side-effects that result from my myeloma cells dying and […]
My Streak is Over
From Suzie: Hi everyone. The fledgling unicorn is back in the hospital. He woke up this morning with some fever and chills. This is pretty normal with CAR-T as it starts to work, the body reacts with inflammation which causes fevers. It is what is called Cytokine Release Syndrome. His case is low grade at this point and they are hoping to keep it that way by giving him an […]
I Keep Rolling Along
It’s now D+12 and I continue to do great. No side-effect symptoms at all. We had an appointment at Stanford on Saturday for labs and vitals. Everything was normal except my sodium, so now I’m happily putting extra salt on my food per the nurse’s order. They said that Days 10 – 12 were often the times that side effects would appear, and that the other lady who got her […]
Our Palo Alto Apartment + Site Vote
One day out of the hospital, and all is still well. Still no side effects. Suzie is diligently taking my temperature (normal) and blood pressure (ditto). Yesterday after leaving the hospital I went on a breezy, sunny 1.1 mile walk, which was pleasant and easy. I have to wear a mask outside, but just a paper N95, not the monster mask required last time I was here. Suzie did a […]
November 4, 1980 (aka It’ll Be OK)
Election day 1980. I was in my second year of law school in Ithaca, New York, and invited about 15 of my fellow classmates/friends over to the attic apartment on College Avenue that I shared with my Sue and Sue to watch the election returns. As the evening went on and it became clearer and clearer that Ronald Reagan was going to become the next President, the sense of disbelief […]
What Vlad Knows
It’s now almost a certainty that Russia is attempting to influence the U.S. Presidential election by leaking stolen/hacked emails from John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager. And it’s evident who Russia wants to win the election: Donald Trump. Before pulling the lever, or filling in the bubble, or marking an “x” on the ballot for Trump, every Trump supporter ought to take a good long while to ask, “Why?” Why […]
Augusta
Suzie’s Aunt Ellen is an Episcopal nun. Until I met Suzie and Ellen, I didn’t know there were Episcopal nuns, nor that there was any kind of monastic tradition left in American religious groups. But Ellen is living in a convent, called the Order of St. Helena, which recently relocated to a beautiful, calm piece of property in North Augusta, South Carolina, just across the river from the more famous […]
The Hard Parts Matter Too
About 5:15 p.m., the idea of driving from Santa Rosa to Kalispell didn’t seem nearly as good as it had earlier in the day. Most of the day had been easy and beautiful, especially the drive from Redding to Bend, sunshine and clear blue skies, evergreen forests and stark dry landscapes, all newly seen on a road — US 97 — that I’d never taken. But as the sun fell […]