January 31, 2023
I’ve gotten a lot of inquiries from folks about the status of my CAR-T treatment as well as what's involved. It seems like I’ve run into a comedy of errors. Even though I received notice from Kaiser three weeks ago that I was now authorized to get CAR-T treatment at Stanford, basically nothing happened until a couple days ago. . . .
January 4, 2023
A New Year brings new medical developments.
In my previous blog of December 21, I mentioned two new procedures that have been approved by the FDA and are being used to treat multiple myeloma (as well as some other cancers). CAR-T therapy, and Bispecific antibodies. Little did I know… Within the last few days, I’ve been put on the . . .
December 21, 2022
Happy Winter Solstice
I'm keeping rather cozy these days, staying mostly inside and continuing my penchant for decorating for the holidays. Lights, lights and more lights. If you want to see a slide show of mostly past and few present holiday decorations, check out this link: https://tinyurl.com/1200xmas I think this is the first . . .
November 29, 2022
I had my first new round of treatment yesterday. This is a weekly “cocktail” of Kyprolis (infusion), Cytoxan (12 tablets), Dexamethasone (5 pills) and Zofran (2 pills). I’m keeping Kaiser in business! I was a little anxious -- not only because there’s a 50-50 chance of unpleasant side-effects like nausea, vomiting and loss of appetite. Those . . .
November 18, 2022
After waiting a couple weeks for my rescheduled PET scan, the results finally came in. The news wasn’t so great. The PET scan showed many new lesions throughout my bones, notably in my spine, pelvis and ribs. In multiple myeloma, lesions are created when the cancerous myeloma cells in the bone marrow cause older bone to break down faster than . . .
November 1, 2022
How quickly things change. The results of my bone marrow biopsy came in yesterday and they were pretty discouraging. The myeloma cells in my marrow has jumped from 70% in April to 95% at present. Dr. Green my oncologist wants to start a new regime soon since the current treatment clearly isn’t working. He wanted to wait until after the . . .
October 31, 2020
Happy Halloween! I had my bone marrow biopsy last week, and will have my PET scan tomorrow. I should find out the results from each of these within a week or so. The biopsy might have gone smoothly, but there was a slight complication. A week before, I had a bike accident that left me with a large football-sized bruise on my left side. (I . . .
