I've shared this with a few friends over the past few hours, but I figured I'd just put it out there. Some of this is repeated from my previous blog.

Last Friday during my exam by the Kaiser neurologist Dr. Samman, he found four cranial nerves that are affected: my left eye, right face, right forehead and right ear. He was convinced it was either from a stroke (nerves radiating from the back of my head) or that the cancerous myeloma cells had invaded my skill and brain. Dr. Samman ordered an MRI asap as he thought this would confirm what was going on. At the same time , he wasn't knowledgeable about CAR-T so I had to explain it to him as best as I could. When I first passed his prognosis to Dr. Sidana, she thought Dr. Samman just wasn't familiar with side-effects from CAR-T and thought this is what's going on. This lessened my anxiety until...

According to Dr. Samman, yesterday's MRI showed that the myeloma has invaded my skull and brain. When I passed the latest MRI results to Dr. Sidana at Stanford, her assistant messaged me back right away: "I'm so sorry," and set up a video appointment with me for tomorrow Thursday morning. When I talked with Dr. Green this morning, he was honest: "The outlook is pretty grim." Dr. Sidana concurred. Dr. Green confirmed these brain skull lesions are new, so he's ordered a PET scan to see what else is affected. There really aren't any good treatment options at this point, except possibly another chemotherapy: Talquetamab. It has some side effects, and Dr. Green and I are already talking about quality of life.

I'm feeling fairly alarmed and discouraged about what's going on. So, keep me in your thoughts, prayers and good vibes. For now, I'm just rolling with the punches. I'll post the latest news when it comes in.

This bloom from my garden today is a color variation of the infamous "Naked Ladies" (Amaryllis belladonna) which have been in bloom throughout the Bay Area. I also have white and nearly all-red ones that surround my corner stop sign.