A "Booster Shot" of Chemotherapy

Last week's extensive testing revealed good news and bad news. The good news is that I am a 51 year-old with the body of a 40 year-old. The bad news is, that 40 year-old body has myeloma that is beginning to make a comeback. My last Velcade treatment was January 9, and the little beast is taking advantage of that lull to regroup and reassert itself. It is not advisable to enter the stem cell stimulation and collection phase with resurgent myeloma, so the solution is a "booster shot" of chemotherapy. On Friday, I will be treated with a single dose of Cytoxan, which will knock back the myeloma sufficiently to allow stem cell stimulation to begin the very next day. The really bad news is that, as the name suggests, Cytoxan is toxic, or at least more so than Velcade. This means that the process of nausea, hair loss, and listlessness will begin a good week earlier than originally planned. Ah, well, I always was precocious! I did have one small compensation earlier today. While walking through the skyway to Mayo, I held a door open for Florence and a middle-aged woman who was walking just behind us. Florence commented on my politeness, and I rejoined, "People often mistake me for...." planning to finish up that sentence by saying "...a gentleman." Before I could finish, however, the woman piped up: "....George Clooney!" She made me a friend for life! Florence, however, teases me by saying that the woman really said, "Mickey Rooney!" Be that as it may, I'm feeling, as Austin Powers would say, "Dead Sexy" right now....which is a whole lot better than feeling just plain dead, which I did a lot in October.

Now is the time that tests my body

The title of this post, of course, paraphrases Tom Paine's immortal line, "Now is the time that tries mens souls." Florence and I are in Rochester, and the next few days will be occupied by a long list of tests to determine if I am healthy enough to undergo the chemotherapy and the stem cell transplant that will, God willing, get me into remission. Here are the tests (leaving our routine blood and urine tests), in the order in which they will be administered: bone marrow biopsy, chest x-ray, electrocardiogram, transfusion access evaluation, dental examination, general x-rays, echocardiogram, pulmonary function test, PET scan, psychiatric evaluation, MRI, and renal function test. If I pass all of these, we can then proceed to harvesting stem cells for eventual transplantation. If I don't pass, my doctors will prescribe whatever it takes to get me to pass. Actually, I feel as if I have already passed the most rigorous test: the first two nights that Florence and I were in Rochester, the temperatures dipped to minus 26 and minus 24 degrees F. Now, temps in the mid-20s seem balmy, indeed! We will let you know the outcomes of these tests as soon as we can. Unless, that is, the keyboard freezes solid!

End Of 2008 Report

In the spirit of our great business tycoons (well, at least of those who are not currently bankrupt or under indictment), I thought I would send along to you a year-end report on my current condition. And what a year it has been! In early September, I thought I was healthy man with a slight backache. By the middle of October, I was so racked with pain from myeloma and reactions to medicines that I sometimes wondered if I was dying. By November, thanks to velcade chemotherapy, I turned the corner, and by Christmas I was virtually pain-free: the best gift for which anyone could ask.

Velcade has literally saved my life. Besides the cessation of constant pain, it has beaten back the power that myeloma had to weaken bones. For example, from July to October, I fractured five of my ribs, at first by bumping them, but finally just by lying down a bit too hard on the table on which I was getting a radiation treatment. But no more broken bones from November to date, which is in itself a blessing.

I'm still a long way from cured, of which I am reminded every night when the lesions in my larger bones--especially the pelvis--begin to ache. I am receiving treatments that are promoting the healing of these lesions, but it takes time to fill them in--hence the evening aches. Still, I have begun to do things that would have been unthinkable even a month ago. I am up to as much as 30 minutes on the easiest setting of our elliptical exercise machine, and I have even started lifting weights on my weight machine, albeit at much reduced weight totals and at fewer repetitions than before I got sick.

The whole idea is to keep both weight and endurance up and strengthen muscle tone prior to the stem cell transplant coming up later this month at the Mayo Clinic. I'll have much more to report on that front as I endure it. For now, it remains to wish you all a wonderful 2009 (2008 was such a lousy year for us all that 2009 should seem like a vintage year without much effort). I have personally found new meaning in this season of thankfulness--for having the best wife in the world, for having family and friends who rally round at every opportunity, for having skilled medical practitioners who use the fruits of modern pharmaceutical research to save lives. My 2009 bring us more of the same in every category!