Critical Elements of Health Reform

I received an email today from the International Myeloma Foundation (IMF) asking me to post about the Cancer Patient Statement of Principles, to help assure that the essential elements of health reform will become law despite the current partisan tension.

Happy to do it! These elements are:

• Affordable access to basic and catastrophic health care coverage for as many Americans as possible.
• The elimination of "pre-existing conditions" as a barrier to health care coverage.
• The elimination of annual and lifetime caps on insurance coverage.
• Closing of the Medicare "donut hole."
• Continued investment in research and innovation to address the needs of those with all deadly diseases.

To show your support for these priorities, please visit the IMF advocacy page and contact your Senators and Congressperson.  And feel free to blog about it yourself!

Thank you!    Don

When The Receptionist Knows Your Name

January 7, 2010, end of Cycle 24:

You know you're battling cancer when the receptionist at the Mayo Clinic Hematology desk knows your name as you walk in. Happened Thursday.

24 cycles of the pomalidomide (CC-4047, Actimid) study are complete, and it's been a great ride. Not over yet, but Thursday was a hint that it might be over before long. Or was it a hint? The worst news, really, was that M-spike went from 0.9 to 1.0 g/dL. I stopped dexamethasone (DEX) completely for this cycle, the first cycle without it, and M-spike inched up. Maybe. Although M-spike tracks the tumor burden most closely, it is not especially accurate, and IgG only went up a little, from 1090 to 1100 mg/dL, so maybe it didn't really change. IgG is a measure of ALL immunoglobulins, including the monoclonal ones that make up M-spike, so if M-spike goes up by 0.1 g/dL, then IgG has to go up by 100 mg/dL, all else being equal. So I don't know whether to cry in my beer or not. I guess I'll just drink it.

I did try to stave off an increase, with curcumin 8 grams per day and quercetin 4 grams per day during this cycle. Did they help? No way to know, but if they did, they didn't help enough to send M-spike southward. I've also taken ashwagandha for three cycles now, one capsule per day, and I think I'll probably stop that because it made no noticeable improvement for any of the three cycles. I'll keep taking the curcumin and quercetin for another cycle, on the theory that M-spike might have been worse without them.

The other bad news is that my neutrophil count has dropped to 1.38 K/uL, its lowest level ever and well below the bottom of the reference range, which is 1.70 K/uL. Further, my white cell count (which includes neutrophils) confirms this, dropping by just about the same amount. This is one of several possible pomalidomide side effects. I had thought I was immune to this problem, but now that I look closely, both of these numbers have edged downward during the 24 cycles. They bounce around a lot, because neutrophils and other white cells respond to microbial threats in the body, but the trend line tilts slightly downward, as indicated by the blue dots in this chart.

It's possible that those white counts are down partly because my body just hasn't encountered any threats lately. Somehow, I successfully navigated all of the Christmas and New Year's parties, plus a grandson visit, without catching anything. Whatever the reason, however, without sufficient neutrophils a person could develop a life-threatening neutropenic fever, so the pomalidomide study requires a neutrophil count of at least 1.00 K/uL. To keep the count high enough the regimen can be changed, from pomalidomide every day to three weeks on and one week off. If that isn't enough, there may be another way to reduce the dosage, perhaps taking the 2-mg capsules every other day, though we didn't discuss that. Getting ahead of myself here.

Running seems to be going a bit better without the DEX. Dr KDS says that it may take a couple of months for the DEX effects to wear off entirely. I do notice that a small open skin scrape on one ankle has healed over since stopping the DEX, and other little skin injuries heal faster too. I imagine that the microscopic muscle, tendon, and bone injuries that a runner gets all of the time will also heal more quickly. If so, they won't develop into painful injuries that would require me to stop or slow the training. We'll see. Several more marathons ahead this year, if all goes well.

Some current test results:

Test		Oct 15		Nov 12		Dec 10		Jan 07		Remarks
M-spike g/dL		0.9		0.9		0.9		1.0		Best tumor measure
IgG mg/dL		1020		1100		1090		1110		Variation is normal
L FLC mg/dL		2.68		2.61		2.36		2.18		L Free light chains
Calcium mg/dL		10.3		9.8		10.0		9.6		Below 10.2 is best
Creat mg/dL		1.0		1.0		1.1		1.1		Kidney, normal
HGB g/dL		15.0		14.4		14.3		14.4		Hemoglobin, normal
RBC M/uL		4.21		4.00		4.00		4.05		Red cell count, low
WBC K/uL		4.2		3.9		3.7		3.5		White cells, low
ANC K/uL		1.78		1.53		1.55		1.38		Neutrophils, low

Related links:

	My Myeloma		A discussion of my myeloma, not very technical.
	My Treatment History		Not technical.
	My Test Charts		Graphic displays of several key test results over time.
	My Test Result Table		Best with a wide browser window. Very "technical."

Sunshine made this. I ate it for dinner. Yum.