Bradycardia

Cycles in the pomalidomide study are 28 days long. Every third cycle, the protocol calls for an electrocardiogram - I'm not sure why. The comments on mine always say "Marked sinus bradycardia, otherwise normal ECG." Today's was the same - no significant change from the previous ECG in early May. No problem.

From the Saturday Evening Post, July / August 2012

Bradycardia simply means that the resting heart rate (pulse rate) is low, in this case 43, when a rate of 60 or more would be normal. My heart rate is lower than normal because I'm a runner - it gradually went down within a few months after I started running ten years ago. This is not a problem - many runners have lower heart rates, as do other endurance athletes.

Since the total number of beats in a week or a month is far fewer than otherwise, even considering the higher heart rates during our runs, we like to tell ourselves that our hearts won't wear out as soon as they might. It's total rubbish, I suppose, because hearts don't wear out, they fail from disease, but you never know.

I'm going on about bradycardia because the myeloma results are boring, except to me. IgG is up 9% from 998 to 1090 mg/dL, but it bounces up and down, and M-spike is stable at 1.0. Stable is good - in fact it's wonderful, lifegiving. Someday M-spike will start to rise, as myeloma seems to require, but not today. Lambda light chains are down too, as is the kappa/lambda ratio.  All good.

Most-Recent Test Results:

Test		May 04		May 29		Jun 29		Jul 26		Remarks
M-spike g/dL		1.1		1.1		1.0		1.0		\ Tumor marker no change
IgG mg/dL		1210		1140		998		1090		/ Tumor marker up slightly
Lambda mg/dL		2.75		2.53		3.11		2.30		L free light chains
Calcium mg/dL		10.0		9.7		10.2		9.7		Great
Creatinine mg/dL		1.0		1.2		1.0		1.1		Kidney, OK
HGB g/dL		15.6		15.7		14.7		14.5		Hemoglobin, OK
RBC M/uL		4.31		4.37		4.15		4.05		Red cells, a little low
WBC K/uL		5.3		4.6		4.9		4.9		White cells, OK
ANC K/uL		2.70		1.80		2.30		2.20		Neutrophils, OK

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.

E-Race Cancer Media Stories

After running 50 or so marathons on our own, my family and I joined up with Team Continuum and Tackle Cancer last year. Both were started by men with myeloma, both raise money to benefit families with children who have cancer, and both have research goals as well.

This is the E-Race Cancer campaign, which has resulted in several media stories about my running. I've never really been a public person before, but I must admit that this is sort of fun.

This list is a nice, clean-looking table.  If it looks messed up, try widening your browser window:

Date	Media/Place	What	Link
2012 Jul 07	Burlington VT Free Press	Print & Internet	Internet Story
2012 Jun 28	Living with Myeloma	Pat Killingsworth blog	Internet Blog
2012 Jun 26	Alaska Public Radio	Web video story	Internet Video
2012 Jun 25	KYUR/KTBY Anchorage	ABC and Fox TV story	Internet Video
2012 Jun 25	KTUU TV Anchorage	TV news story	Internet Video
2012 Jun 21	Anchorage Daily News	Print story, Don is toward end	Internet Story
2012 Jun 17	KSTP TV Mpls/St Paul	TV sports story, John Gross	Internet Video
2012 Mar 08	Bay Weekly, Annapolis	Print & Internet	Internet Story
2011 Dec 14	Gizmodo.com	Internet news story	Internet Story
2011 Dec 12	Brazil	TV news story	Internet Story
2011 Nov 30	Alternative Medicine Mag	Internet news story	Internet Story
2011 Nov 29	CNN Video	CNN on "American Morning"	Internet Video
2011 Nov 04	EverydayHealth.com	Internet news, six people	Internet Story
2011 Oct 24	Business Wire	Internet news story	Internet Story
2011 Oct 23	Mpls StarTribune	Print story, Tim Harlow	Internet Story
2011 Oct 17	For Colored Gurls	Internet story & video	Internet Story
2011 Oct 15	WFSB TV Hartford, CT	TV news wrapup	Internet Video
2011 Oct 13	Kick Runners Forums	Internet news story	Internet Story
2011 Oct 02	WCSH6 TV Portland, ME	TV news story, Jackie Ward	Internet Video
2011 Sep 30	Portland Press Herald	Print story, Glenn Jordan	Internet Story
2011 Sep 16	WJET TV Erie, PA.	TV news story	Internet Video

We have now finished 65 marathons in 46 states. We have finished four marathons so far this year, and are registered for marathons in the four remaining states (West Virginia, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Hawaii). If all goes well, we will finish in December.

A permanent link to this list is located in the right panel under E-Race Cancer Links. The list will be kept up to date.

Carfilzomib (Kyprolis) Is Approved by FDA

Onyx Pharmaceuticals announced today that their investigational drug carfilzomib has been approved by the FDA for treatment of myeloma, and is now available for prescription by doctors under the trade name Kyprolis. Here is the Onyx press release.

Kyprolis is a proteazome inhibitor, which means that it works rather like Velcade does, but in studies it seemed to be at least as powerful and caused much less neuropathy. It is approved for patients who have received at least two prior therapies. In my (nonmedical) opinion, however, when doctors have gained confidence in Kyprolis' efficacy and safety, they will begin to prescribe it for newly-diagnosed patients, as they have done with other drugs.

In particular, a recently-published study has shown that Kyprolis in combination with Revlimid and dexamethasone produced a 100% response in newly-diagnosed patients, with 64% of patients achieving a stringent complete response, meaning that their myeloma was undetectable.  In my (nonmedical) opinion, this combination will be hard for doctors to resist.

Kyprolis is administered in a 2- to 10-minute infusion in a clinical setting.  It is the first-approved of two innovative and potent drugs recently submitted for approval to the FDA.  The other is pomalidomide, by Celgene, an oral drug (a little pill taken at home) which will hopefully be approved in early 2013.  Pomalidomide has kept my own myeloma stable for well over four years now.

Right now the cure for myeloma is to stay alive long enough to die of something else.  Kyprolis, and soon pomalidomide, will give us two more tools to make that happen.  Lots more is happening in the labs.  Stick around, there is hope!