I apologize for the delay in updating this post, but some medical matters intervened. Let me explain.
Last Saturday, I flew out to San Francisco to spend time with Brian and family. We had long planned to do some hiking in the hills around his home in Novato. Last year at this time, I was visiting them, and Brian and I hiked Muir Woods. There were a few hills, and I became noticeably winded, as I was badly out of shape.
This year, I vowed to correct that, so I went back to the gym a couple of months ago and started spending 30 minutes on the treadmill 2 or 3 times a week, sometimes with an incline. It paid off. We went back to Muir Woods on Monday and walked further than we did last year, and I did much better. Brian was impressed. Then the next day, we walked about a mile up a hill to a beautiful waterfall near his house, again without a problem. But not for long.
I think 3 things contributed to the problem. First, my MM treatment has weakened my immune system. In fact, I have an appointment at Dana Farber this Friday to receive an IV infusion of gamma globulin to strengthen my immune system against bacterial and viral infections. Secondly, I think I overdid it by walking nearly 6 miles in 2 days, far more than I am used to. Finally, I stupidly didn't bring any water along on either day, and I think I got seriously dehydrated. Duh!
By that evening, I wasn't feeling well. I started drinking water, but it was too late. I then spent all day Wednesday resting and shivering and napping on their couch.
I flew home on Thursday. I was going to update my blog on the flight, but I didn't feel well and lost the Internet connection less than halfway home. So I just rested and napped the rest of the way.
I had left my car at Holly and Ryan's in East Boston while away. I Ubered there, but I was out of breath after climbing the stairs to their condo. Ryan offered for me to stay the night, so I crashed on their couch. They have been so nice to me. I don't know what I would do without them!
Friday morning I drove home and called my PCP. She suggested that I go to the ER, so I went to the Anna Jaques ER nearby, where I got a battery of tests, including an EKG, multiple blood draws, a Covid test, chest X-ray, an IV drip of saline solution, and a chest CT scan to rule out a pulmonary embolism (fortunately negative).
The diagnosis finally came in. I am COVID-negative but have bronchitis and pneumonia in both lungs. They started me on 2 antibiotics and a cough blocker. I picked up the rest of the scrips this morning. I'm feeling okay right now, but I'm still pretty weak and tired.
I'm sure you were enthralled by the above narrative, but it has little to do with the purported purpose of this blog, which is Multiple Myeloma. I will fix that. It might be helpful to start with a review of my M-spike history over the past year. I have prepared a graph of the results, but I can't load it, so I'll just describe it.
In March of last year, my M-spike was zero and I was still in remission. By April, a slight M-spike was unmeasurable, but I knew then that the handwriting was on the wall (I will eschew doing a phraseology analysis of that idiom).
By September, it had risen to 0.29, still well below the level of 0.5 for it to qualify on its own for a relapse. However, my Kappa light chain was starting to go haywire. By October, my Kappa exceeded the threshold and I was officially in relapse.
I then joined the clinical trial and began treatment on November 29. By December 4, my M-spike had dropped to barely measurable. That was amazing! I then got Covid, which delayed my treatment for about 3 weeks. My January numbers showed the M-spike rising to 0.1. Could that have been due to the delay in my treatment? By February, it stayed at 0.1. Meh.
Then the latest result on March 15 shows it rising a bit to 0.12. I was a bit disappointed at first, but then I realized that I had been downplaying a silver lining in the SPEP narrative that has accompanied the data numbers since my treatment began, to wit:
"The M-spike is admixed within a background of polyclonal immunoglobulins. The M-spike concentration reported includes both the M-spike and the polyclonal immunoglobulin background and is thus an overestimate. Patient's faint IgG Kappa is most likely associated with Daratumumab therapy."
The bottom line is that the current M-spike numbers are probably due to my treatment chemotherapy, not Multiple Myeloma!
From now on, unless or until my M-spike (or other indicator) spirals out of control, I am putting my concerns about my high-risk t(4,14) and amp(1q) anomalies on the back burner, and I'm going to keep on my Happy Face. See? 😁 It's all good!
