Reschedule

Now that the dust has cleared from our misadventures on Tuesday, everything seems to be back on track, although there will be some delay.  Apparently, I am the first patient to undergo this particular clinical trial arm at DFCI, so some paperwork never got filed in a timely way.  Since there may be a week or so delay due to this oversight, Muriel decided to delay everything by two weeks and start my consolidation therapy on June 4.  I don't think there is any clinical downside for this delay, so it shouldn't be any problem.

Actually, this delay falls in nicely with our travel plans for this summer.  Ironically, our anniversary week is now a bye week, so we could have taken our trip to Bermuda that week after all!  However, we are happy with our decision to visit Niagara Falls instead, so we are looking forward to doing that.  The other good thing is that my niece's wedding in August will now also fall on a bye week, so we won't have to make any special arrangements to accommodate that.   Things seem to have a way of working out!

While at DFCI on Tuesday, I asked about the timing for me to get re-staged with a bone marrow biopsy.  The plan now is to wait until after my consolidation therapy.  That makes sense to me, since by then the results will show the combined effect of my stem cell transplant and consolidation regimen, before I start on long-term maintenance.

In my May 19 post, I offered to email the document summarizing my stem cell decision-making process, which I have already done for a few people.  However, there is now an easier way to access the document, since Pat Killingsworth today published the first of a two-part installment of my story on his blog.  Here is the link:  Pat Killingsworth's blog on my transplant story.  He plans to post the remainder of my story tomorrow.  I'm flattered that Pat chose to feature my decision process on his blog.  I will be very interested in any feedback that it generates, and I hope to learn a lot more from the MM patient community about all of these treatment options.