Not Boring

Doctor Visit 2012 January 12

End of the 50th Cycle of Pomalidomide (CC-4047):

Stable after 50 full cycles. That sounds really boring, but I'm never bored. Every 28 days I go to Mayo Clinic and have blood drawn. The results show up in a couple of hours, and during all that time I'm a little stressed. Then I obsess about the results: were they down, or were they really up? This time I'm going to write about it, without obsessing, and then forget it until next month.

The two major tumor markers are both up. IgG went up almost 20%, from 999 to 1190 mg/dL, and M-spike rose from 1.1 to 1.2 g/dL. That sounds bad, of course, but both numbers do jump around and IgG is still below other recent values. M-spike is as high as it has been recently, but 1.2 g/dL (1200 mg/dL) is actually an impossible value, because it's higher than IgG, so I won't worry about it. I say the myeloma markers are still stable. Whether it makes any difference or not, lambda light chains are down, kappas are down too, and the ratio is unchanged, so that's probably good.

The best news is that calcium came back down from 10.3 to 10.0 mg/dL, below the top of the reference range. Normal. So there is probably NOT a lesion burning a hole in a bone somewhere. We had scheduled an X-ray bone survey for today, but cancelled it. We'll do it in March as part of the annual bone exam.

Some Recent Test Results:

Test		Oct 19		Nov 17		Dec 14		Jan 12		Remarks
M-spike g/dL		1.1		1.1		1.1		1.2		\ Tumor marker
IgG mg/dL		1310		1280		999		1190		/ Tumor marker
Lambda mg/dL		2.75		2.12		3.15		2.24		L Free light chains
Calcium mg/dL		10.0		10.3		10.3		10.0		Normal
Creatinine mg/dL		1.1		1.1		1.1		1.0		Kidney, OK
HGB g/dL		14.6		15.0		15.1		15.1		Hemoglobin, OK
RBC M/uL		4.07		4.18		4.17		4.36		Red cells, normal
WBC K/uL		4.8		5.3		4.8		4.8		White cells, normal
ANC K/uL		2.30		1.70		1.90		2.40		Neutrophils, normal

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		Somewhat technical. Best with a wide browser window.
My Supplement Regimen		With links to where I buy them.

Lunch salad - there's a bed of romaine under there. Organic beets, organic broccoli, roasted organic sweet potato, and the meat is a little leftover ground beef: