Belated Update

Okay, it's May 31 and I haven't updated my blog since right after the amazing 5K event.  I didn't want to miss another opportunity to post in the month of May, so here goes.  This will be short, since there is not a lot of news about myself to post.  My visit to the Farber last week went well, as I still seem to be in remission, thank goodness.  However, as I posted last month, there are some indicators that bother me a bit.  I already mentioned the increase in my bone marrow biopsy plasma cell count from 6% to 8% over the last year, but there are a couple of other things that are beginning to bother me.

First of all, my red blood cell (RBC) counts are dropping.  My hematocrit (HCT) dropped from 45.9 to 41.2 since last month.  It's still above the minimum level of 37.1, but I don't like the trend.  It's been really high since my iron infusion about a year and a half ago, but it's going in the wrong direction now.  I had stopped taking iron pills since my last prescription ran out, but I'm now back on a daily dose to try to reverse this trend.  I also notice that I get tired more easily and am taking more mid-day naps.

Another alarm bell for me is that my light chain Kappa numbers have been steadily increasing over the last year.  Last April, they were at 17.2 mg/l, and this April they had climbed to 27.0.  The normal range maximum is 19.4.  As you may remember, I have IgA Kappa MM, so my Kappa count is of some interest to me.  I talked to Mary McKenney about this last week, but she seemed unconcerned. Really?  Hmmm.  I think with all this going on, I'm going to have a chat with Paul Richardson some time in the near future.  I'm not panicking about these things, but I'm keeping a close eye on them.

The latest issue of the Farber newsletter revealed that Paul Richardson received the MM Achievement Award at the 2nd World Congress on Controversies in MM, held in Paris on April 28.  The award was awarded jointly to Paul and Antonio Columbo of the University of Torino for "innovative research and translational clinical work that has contributed significantly to the development of new therapies and important progress in MM during the last decade".  That's my doc!