My life as a myeloma patient for almost two decades
Author: Beth
I was diagnosed with MM in January of 2003. I underwent various treatments, including thalidomide/dex, revlimid/dex, dex alone, a clinical trial of CNTO 328, and Velcade, Doxil and dex until late August, 2007, when I had an autologous stem cell transplant after high dose melphalan. I experienced what's known as a very good partial response (VGPR). Since then, my myeloma has been stable.
This is a video of some tadpoles that live in the water that’s collected on top of my pool cover. They’re eating some salad greens I tossed onto the water for them. There are hundreds left, even though I’ve given at least a hundred away for kids to watch as they develop into toads or frogs, or whatever they’ll be. They don’t have legs yet, so it could be some weeks before they leave. If you’re local and would like some pollywogs for your classroom aquarium, let me know.
One of my classmates from the Travel Channel Academy has used her video skills to win the use of a car!
“I am one of 100 people to win a 2011 Ford Fiesta (international model) for 6 months! Be sure to check my blog (http://hotfuzzonmylegs.blogspot.com) and twitter (www.twitter.com/lex112884) for more info and to learn more about the winnings!”
That’s very cool. I haven’t done much video myself, but have some projects in the works. Just local stuff, which I’ll post when it’s ready.
I have Zometa tomorrow. It’s been a while since I did that, but there’s a possibility (I’m told) that it has an anti-myeloma effect. I only have it about 3-4 times a year now.
My uncle Darryl Ramsey was recently diagnosed with Stage 3 Multiple Myeloma and was told that he has aprox 1 year to live. However, my uncle feels that Chemo and Radation are a waste of time because he now knows he has been sick with Multiple Myeloma for over 10 years and thinks he is still here today because of the fact that he was the type of person to refuse going to doctors and he for years started jucing and eating better every day. Like most people the first thing my uncle did was a Google search and he found nothing but grimm information. I started www.myelomaforums.com because I wanted him and others like him to have access to information from other people so that him and others like him know about all the best treatments and have access to all the answers. However, the hardest part of getting a sucessful forum started is getting people and content. I am here to ask everyone to please sign up with www.myelomaforums.com as well because the more your stories are out there the more people we can help.
Thanks,
Andy
P.S. Beth your’re a sweetheart and thanks for the kind email and willingness to help.
I’m putting my links to blogs into a feed aggregator. If your blog has an RSS feed and you’d like to have it on the list, let me know. Just us the contact form. Don’t forget to tell me what the URL for your valid RSS feed is.
This caught my eye because I’ve been on Velcade before and never gave a second thought to whether or not I should not be consuming green tea/green tea products.
Encouse B. Golden, Philip Y. Lam, Adel Kardosh, Kevin J. Gaffney, Enrique Cadenas, Stan G. Louie, Nicos A. Petasis, Thomas C. Chen, and Axel H. Schonthal*
Department of Pathology, University of Southern California (USC) Keck School of Medicine (KSOM), Los Angeles, CA, United States
Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Toxicology, USC School of Pharmacy (SoP), Los Angeles, CA, United States
Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, USC KSOM, Los Angeles, CA, United States
Department of Chemistry, USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles, CA, United States
Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy, USC SoP, Los Angeles, CA, United States
Department of Neurosurgery, USC KSOM, Los Angeles, CA, United States
* Corresponding author; email: schontha@usc.edu.
The anticancer potency of green tea and its individual components is being intensely investigated, and some cancer patients already self-medicate with this ‘miracle herb’ in hopes of augmenting the anticancer outcome of their chemotherapy. Bortezomib (Velcade®) is a proteasome inhibitor in clinical use for multiple myeloma. Here, we investigated whether the combination of these compounds would yield increased antitumor efficacy in multiple myeloma and glioblastoma cell lines in vitro and in vivo. Unexpectedly, we discovered that various green tea constituents, in particular (-)-epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) and other polyphenols with 1,2-benzenediol moieties, effectively prevented tumor cell death induced by bortezomib in vitro and in vivo. This pronounced antagonistic function of EGCG was only evident with boronic acid-based proteasome inhibitors (bortezomib, MG-262, PS-IX), but not with several non-boronic acid proteasome inhibitors (MG-132, PS-I, nelfinavir). EGCG directly reacted with bortezomib and blocked its proteasome inhibitory function; as a consequence, bortezomib could not trigger endoplasmic reticulum stress or caspase-7 activation, and did not induce tumor cell death. Taken together, our results indicate that green tea polyphenols may have the potential to negate the therapeutic efficacy of bortezomib and suggest that consumption of green tea products may be contraindicated during cancer therapy with bortezomib.
What a great party! We had the honor of attending our sister’s 50th birthday party last night. It was perfect! The guests were a great group of people, the food was outstanding and the music was great. This one surpassed even a “Night Affair on Elm Street.”
Everyone should now go on over to the WriterHouse web site to make a donation in honor of Rachel’s birthday.
Beautifully presented food was a part of the celebration
