One Year on Maintenance

My Farber appointment this month was Monday, which marked a full year on this Clinical Trial using maintenance therapy with Revlimid.  The news continues to be positive, as my latest SPEP pathology results continue to show no M-spike or monoclonal gammopathy.  It also shows a dramatic jump into the normal range for my immunoglobulins IgM, IgG and IgA.  I wouldn't be too upset if the IgA slowed down a little bit, since that is the one that went cuckoo and caused my MM.  It's currently at 263, which is OK.  When I was diagnosed with MM, it was over 3,000.  As long as it stays under 400 (normal range), I'll be comforted.

Furthermore some of my other blood test numbers have also shown improvement.  Two big improvements are my white blood cell count (WBC), which jumped to 4.2 (normal range) after hovering around 2.9 for the last year, and my absolute neutrophil count (ANC), which jumped from 1.36 to 2.19, which is in the normal range for the first time in a year!  Woohoo!  Mary and Muriel told me that these results show that I am continuing to show a good recovery from my ASCT.

All of this is really good news.  The only turds in the punch bowl are my RBC, HCT and Hgb readings, which continue to show that I am still anemic.  I don't know when or if that will improve, but I have been told that that is a very slow process, and it might be hindered somewhat by my continued use of Revlimid.  You know what?  If that's the only thing I have to complain about, well shut me up!

Last week I had the pleasure of sailing with my good friend, Lew, for a couple of days out of South Dartmouth, MA.  He has a 35-foot Cape Dory sailboat, and we sailed to Vineyard Haven on Martha's Vineyard the first day.  We had good winds and we passed through Woods Hole without incident.  The weather was perfect!  We had dinner on the water at a nice restaurant, and we slept on the boat comfortably.

The next day we sailed to Cuttyhunk Harbor.   As we have done in the past, we bought some fresh swordfish and grilled it on the boat.  It was delicious.  What a treat!  Afterwards, we enjoyed this view of the sunset.  It doesn't get any better than this!  We got another good night's sleep on the boat before sailing back to home base at Padanaram Harbor.  Wow!  What a great vacation!

I have to thank my lucky stars every day that I can continue to enjoy life's adventures such as this one.  If and when a relapse of my MM happens and I can no longer enjoy doing such things, at least I will have memories such as this to comfort me.