Author: Beth

I have a 2000 Chevy S10 for sale. See it here: http://home.pinehurst.net/chevy/

I signed on this thing for my brother, then he quit his job and left town! I have to get rid of it!

There’s a condition called peripheral neuropathy that I have as a result of one of the treatments I’ve had. For about 10 months, I took a drug called Thalomid, and it caused nerve damage in my feet and hands. Just recently, my doctor told me to cut out my B-6 supplementation. I have done that, and am hoping it will result in lessening the severity of the nerve damage. Keep your fingers crossed!

I stayed up too late last night (until at least 3:30 am), so I slept until noon. The day flew by after that. I did some grocery shopping, went to my office and got a monitor to replace one that was broken at mom’s house (family business, so I’m not stealing from my employer – I am my employer). I walked the dog a little over a mile, and then came home.

Since I took dexamethasone (dex) last night, I’m very tired now. It won’t be long before I go to sleep, but I’m probably going to need some help anyway. I take xanax to help me sleep and stop the jitters from the dex.

I’m about to do some time on the Nordic Track Ellipse. Since I have high blood sugar when I take dex, exercise is one of the things that helps keep it down. It works pretty fast too. I wonder if this would be the case with type II diabetes too? My endocrinologist doesn’t call my high blood sugar diabetes, he calls it a metabolic disorder.

I’m going to be switching my treatment facility with the hope of saving some money. I do have insurance, but I have to pay 20% of the cost of the treatment, Zometa, which costs over $2,000 every 4 weeks. If you don’t have insurance now, do whatever you can to get it. Cancel your cable and cut back on anything else you can. It’s more important than you could ever imagine until something like cancer happens to you. If I didn’t have insurance, I’d have had to sell my house and car by now. Don’t count on the government (or anyone else) to care what happens to you. I’m serious about that. I got cancer when I was 41 years old, and am 43 now. Multiple Myeloma is a chronic cancer. I’ll need treatment the rest of my life, and eventually will have a stem cell transplant, which can cost up to $150,000. Please take my word for it and get health coverage if you don’y already have it. An illness will be financially devastating.

Ok, I’m going to hit the Nordic Track!

Please try to buy goods that are made in the USA. Here’s a site that has listings of US made products. I had trouble using the search function. It didn’t work for me.
http://www.madeinusa.org/

I’m concerned about what’s happening with US companies. A hosiery mill near here had over 1000 employees a year ago and now has fewer than 500. They got squeezed by Wal-mart, who only wants to pay pennies for goods they want to sell. When our US companies can’t afford to produce the goods so cheaply, Wal-mart buys them from companies in China. Wal-mart used to make a big deal about selling products made in the USA, but, in order to increase their own profits and make the Waltons richer, they’ve abandoned that. Now they’re saturating ad time with sappy messages about how much they care about their employees and the communities where they have stores. We all know how much they care about their employees. There have been recent cases brought against them for discrimination against women. Their employees say that they keep as many of them as possible below full time status so they don’t have to pay benefits. Another story says they have been shaving time off employees’ paychecks through the electronic timekeeping system. There’s more. All you have to do is go to Google and search: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=walmart+greed. Yeah, I’m upset. I’m tired of seeing big companies run the country. It doesn’t matter which party is in office.

If you have broadband, take some time to watch this PBS Frontline: Tax Me if You Can. The whole program is viewable online. You’ll be surprised at the big companies getting away without paying any taxes. In fact, some even get huge refunds. One US bank received over $100 million. That’s OUR money, folks!

These are the trials I mentioned before. I haven’t found any information on them yet!

1. A monoclonal antibody to IL-6, CNTO 328, made by Centocor

2. A monoclonal antibody to CD40, CHIR-12.12, made by Chiron

Dr. O. told me about a few trials that are going to be open possibly in December for me. One has to do with anti-interleuken 6. The other, which I didn’t pay as close attention to, has to do with enhancing natural killer cell activity. I told him it sounds like a PS2 game!

I’m interested in the anti-IL-6 trial. He said it has been tested on patients with renal cell carcinoma. While it didn’t work for hem, the trial showed that the treatment was well tolerated. It would involve an infusion every two weeks. I’ll get more information from him and do more studying, then I’ll post it here.

My latest labs indicate that my serum IgA went down. I don’t know why or how, but I’m happy for it. I could tell there was going to be a change, because my total protein value was down for the first time in a while. It was at 6.7 mg/dL. The next day, I called in to see what my IgA was. Sure enough, it was 854 mg/dL.

This is an overview of the last four months. Normal IgA ranges from 40-390 mg/dL:

I saw Dr. Comeau, one of the transplant doctors at UNC last week. This was my second time meeting him, although I don’t think he remembered me. We talked about what the program at UNC entails. It’s all online at http://www.mysct.org. One of the things we talked about is my sensitivity to drugs. I experience side effects at low doses. I had a time with thalidomide and am having difficulties with dex. One thing he told me is that before I go through high dose chemo, I have to lose 20-30 lbs. That will help reduce some of the toxicity, since the dose is determined by weight.