Kit Draw

That's what they call it.  For the first time in 92 cycles of Pomalyst, we three did not drive the 200-mile round trip from home to Mayo Clinic and back.  Instead we agreed with Mayo that the blood draw could be done at a local clinic.  Mayo, however, still wanted to use their own lab for the critical measurements of IgG, M-spike, and maybe some others.  This is how it worked:

• A couple of weeks ago Mayo sent me a cube-shaped box (kit), perhaps 10 inches on all sides, containing five vials, instructions, a FedEx overnight return label, and a freezable gel block about the size of a pound of hamburger.  Instructions said to do the draw on March 9.  
• Just to check, I stopped in at the clinic a week or so ago, showed them the box, and asked about the kit draw.  "Oh yeah, we do that all the time," was the response.  
• I froze the gel.  
• On March 9, Monday afternoon (fasting!), I put the gel back in the box and took the whole box to the local clinic.  The two people at the lab desk were unfamiliar with the process but they read the instructions and were game to do it, if I would stick around for an hour or two and carry the completed kit to the FedEx office a half mile away.  It might take that long because the instructions required them to centrifuge a couple of the samples.
• While I waited, though, we encountered a more seasoned technician who had indeed done this before, and who informed us all that the clinic has a regular, scheduled FedEx pickup every afternoon.  So I left it all in their good hands.  
• By Tuesday afternoon the results were available for my viewing in my Mayo Clinic account, looking very much like my usual results.

In particular IgG was down slightly, from 1270 to 1210 mg/dL, and M-spike from 1.2 to 1.1 g/dL.  Down is better than up, but I'm thinking that both of those changes are probably within the margin of error for their tests, so the differences are not significant.  Stable = boring = wonderful.  Life is good.  I feel like going out for a run.