@dexamethasone

#84. One Day at a Time

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 4 Comments

Spring is a magical time for me. I never tire of looking out the windows at the many flowers, ferns, plants and trees as they come out in response to the warmth in the soil and other encouraging signs of Spring. On most days, the sun is there to warm my face. When it rains, the droplets glisten on the leaves as the hummingbirds dart back and forth between the feeder and their favourite perch. The wisteria is blossoming and will soon be in full flower, providing a shade canopy for the deck in anticipation of those lazy, hazy days of summer.

Wisteria

Occasionally I will take a slow stroll through the gardens aided by my cane and revel in the glorious, delicious scents that emanate from the many flowers that are now in full bloom. Right now the crab-apple tree with its ten or twelve foot canopy is showing off its clusters of blossoms and establishing its perfumed dominance as it spreads out next to the driveway. In the vegetable garden, without the benefit of a sweet scent, the rhubarb has already provided us with a delicious desert and promises more. The garlic is as hardy as ever this year and will supply us with all that we could possibly want for the coming year.

  • Crab-apple blossoms
  • Crab-apple tree

I seem to be feeling better as time goes by. Springtime has that effect on me. Of course, I’m 74 and I have the emperor of all maladies as well as various and sundry ailments related to my vertebrae competing to see which of them can make my life most miserable. All of them can and do contribute to the waves of pain that frequently sweep over me, and that inspire me to reach for the opiates and the acetaminophen. That said, I expect improvement in my situation in the coming weeks as I move into a new phase of chemotherapy having Daratumumab infusions once a month but staying the course with lenalidomide and dexamethasone. Of course, because of the nature of myeloma I can only think in the short term, five years tops. I have another handicap that makes my situation somewhat different than others and that’s the fact that I have only one kidney. I lost my left kidney to kidney cell cancer in 2002. The pain in my left side due to the nephrectomy (kidney removal) has not let me forget it either. My left side is a constant source of pain.

I should say that cancer has not been my only tormentor. In my youth I lost a lumbar disk to a sawmill accident leaving my lower back especially vulnerable to re-injury. Given all the physical ailments and challenges I’ve faced over my lifetime, I’ve managed to stay physically active running and cycling as well as working in my shop and studio. Now, the limitations I face are those of old age and cancer. I just have to be super vigilant and not do stupid things, things that could leave me physically incapacitated.

Back to my chemo life, I checked my numbers earlier this afternoon. That means that I consulted MyHealth, an online access to lab results, imaging, appointments, etc., to see what all the blood tests I get periodically can tell me about my state of health. I have results as of May 4th, 2021. Looking at the results you’d have to conclude that you were looking at the blood serum of a very healthy person of my age. It seems that the chemo meds that I’m on now are doing the trick, that is they are suppressing my myeloma down to levels seen in healthy individuals.

Too bad my blood serum won’t maintain that level of normality for any length of time. My myeloma is kept at bay as long as I keep taking my chemo meds. Stop taking my meds and the myeloma wants to kill, kill, kill. The amount of time between when I stop taking my meds and the resurgence of the disease can vary a lot. The last time I stopped taking my chemo meds it was only a matter of a couple of months before my myeloma was back and as active as ever.

With this new chemo regimen it looks like I may get a better result than I got last time. It also looks like I’ll have a long-term relationship with some of my chemo meds. I’m not sure which ones at the moment.

The way these things work, chemo meds only work for a certain length of time after which a new cocktail of chemo meds needs to replace the meds that are no longer working. It looks like the Daratumumab/lenalidomide/dexamethasone triumvirate is going to give me a longer period of remission than I had the last time I went off chemo meds. I’m hoping for years of remission but that’s yet to be determined. If I could get a modicum of mobility as well as ability to use shop tools and studio materials even for a few months I’d be happy. So far my Dara/Lena/Dex trio is doing the trick. I hope it continues that way and buys me some more time.

All I can do is take it one day at a time.

#79. My Numbers!

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 4 Comments

This is the post I’ve been looking forward to writing for some time now. It documents a radical improvement in my myeloma situation. Now, if only I could find a way to rapidly decrease the problems and pain I get from arthritis and degenerative disk syndrome, I would almost be back to a normal life. Of course, I keep forgetting that I’m 74 years old and that I’ll never be able to do the things now that I used to do just ten years ago. But enough grousing about my limitations, it’s time to focus on some recent victories that have everything to do with my numbers.

For me, the one thing that came along with the diagnosis of multiple myeloma or bone marrow cancer was (and is) an obsession and fascination with my numbers. I wrote about this earlier in a blog post on December 17th, 2019 (https://rogerjgalbert.com/2019/12/17/access-to-medical-records/). Now is a good time to revisit my obsession with my numbers because I’ve recently had some pretty spectacular changes in some of my critical numbers. I concur with Paul Kleutghen when he writes:”We (patients and caregivers) have all become so attuned to focusing on numbers that any excursion out of the “normal” causes worries and sleepless nights.”* I generally don’t lose sleep over anything, but, like Kleutghen, I am focussed on my numbers, and I get pretty upset if my numbers are going in the wrong direction or stand outside of the reference numbers.** Of course it’s an entirely different story when my numbers go in the right direction. Numbers are important to me and you’ll see why in this post.

My numbers refers to the lab results I get from frequent visits to the Vancouver Island Heath Authority (VIHA) lab in Courtenay, or to the hospital lab. As a regular thing I get checks of my blood, my white blood cells, red blood cells, monocytes, hemoglobin, neutrophils, eosinophils, basophils, etcetera. I also get regular tests of my kidney function by analysis of creatinine in my blood serum. (I have access to all my lab results through an online VIHA service called MyHealth.). By the way, a really good source of information about reading our lab results can be found here: http://media.myelomacentral.com/wp-content/uploads/UnderstandingYourLabResults.pdf.

Once a month or so I get tested for more myeloma specific indicators in my blood serum. These are paraproteins and free light chains, both kappa and lambda. Our blood has both Free Light Chains and Heavy Chains. These are simply descriptions of the organization of proteins in our blood serum. Without getting into too much technical detail it’s important to note that some myeloma patients are kappa free light chain myeloma patients and some are lambda free light chain myeloma patients. I’m a lambda kind of guy.

So, I went on a new chemo regimen in January. It’s composed of dexamethasone, a glucocorticoid, lenalidomide, a chemo drug (they’re not sure how it works) and Daratumumab, a monoclonal antibody. If your eyes haven’t glassed over yet from all the technical jargon I invite you to have a look at the table below I got from MyHealth. It refers to my Lambda Free Light Chains from June, 2020 to February 26th, 2021. It’s a very informative table. The red numbers highlight times when the lab results indicated that I had lambda free light chains higher than the reference range, which is conveniently given on the right in the table. You can see that from September 30th, 2020 until January 27th, 2021 that the myeloma was getting more active again in my blood, a conclusion supported by the redness of the numbers therein. Not only that, but you can see that the amount of free light chains in my blood was increasing rapidly during that time from 44.2 milligrams per litre of blood on September 30th 2020 to 201 milligrams per litre of blood on January 27, 2021, but in fact had been increasing from June 30, 2020. That was a very worrying trend because the more free light chains in my blood the sicker I get.

Then I started the new course of chemotherapy and the lambda free light chains in my blood went from 201 to 11.7 mg/l a number well within the reference range. That”s why I got so excited when I saw the ‘normal’ 11.7 mg/L on February 26th, just a few days ago. In my discussion with my oncologist in Victoria, he said that we shouldn’t expect to see any positive results for two to three months and here I went from a high of 201 to 11.7 in a month! Now, that is cause for celebration. It means that the Daratumumab is my buddy and is working better than expected. Hallelujah!

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*https://www.myelomacrowd.org/living-with-abnormal-free-light-chain-ratios/

**reference numbers are a range of numbers within which numbers should fit in a ‘normal’ person. Reference numbers are where the majority of people would fit in terms of their standing on any particular measure. It’s a range because there is understandable variation from patient to patient. For example for Kappa Free Light Chains the reference range is 3.30 – 19.40 mg/L.