Category: General

I am at a motel near RDU. I got stuck in FL (not too bad) for an extra day too! The roads are just too icy here to make the drive home, but it’ll be better tomorrow. It’s so nice to be back in NC, where everything doesn’t cost a fortune and people are nice!

Florida drivers are really heavy-handed when it comes to the use of the car horn. I haven’t heard so much use of the horn since I was in NYC. What’s the deal? I thought the pace of life here was supposed to be relaxed!

The bad weather in NC has me stuck in FL now! Not so bad, since it’s 81 degrees now. Only 24 in NC. I still have a cold too. I did buy some masks to wear on the flight home.

I’m here near Ft Lauderdale, FL to attend the IMF Conference. I must have picked up a virus on the plane though. :( I spent the afternoon and evening in bed, missing the afternoon’s events. I’m going to wear a mask on the flights home, that’s for sure. I bought some Zicam to try to fend off this cold, or whatever it is.

Beth–

My name is Leigh and I live in Cary, NC. My mom was diagnosed with MM in September. Stage III, but the doctors won’t say A or B. We initially went to Duke, also; I wanted my mom to see the “the very best.” I bet I know which oncologist you worked with; our experiences were uncannily similar!

She did two courses of VDD, both of which made her so sick she was hospitalized over a week each time. She discontinued it and started Thalidomide and Dexamethasone (with Zometa, too, of course,) in early December.

I was planning on going to the IMF meeting in Fort Lauderdale this weekend, too, but my mom was too sick to leave. I’m the only one around to care for her. I hope it’s a useful weekend for you.

Anyway, I’d love to swap experiences and info with you.

Leigh

Tomorrow morning I’m leaving for Florida to attend my first IMF patient seminar. I’ll take good notes and report anything new I hear here!

What causes hyperviscosity in MM? A list member provided an excellent explanation:

The hyperviscosity seen in myeloma and Waldenstrom’s is not due to the number of cells but the amount of protein in the plasma. Proteins do not dissolve in a solution; they form a colloid. the more protein in a liquid the more likely it is that the liquid will form a gel just like Jello? does.

Now the proteins or protein parts found in myeloma can vary in size. Some folks have very little whole proteins in their blood; they usually have small pieces. For them, the chance of hyperviscosity is quite small. Of the five different proteins which can be the issue in MM, IgG, IgE and IgD can be thought of as single units while IgA is a double unit and IgM is a pentamer or 5 unit structure. So, if you have the entire protein present, it is most likely to hyperviscosity if you have excess IgM, more likely to have hyperviscosity if you have an excess in IgA and least likely if you have an excess of IgG, IgE or IgD.

If it seems like I’m obsessed with junk email, it’s because I am. I’ve seen what it can do to a server and a network. My company uses filtering to weed out pretty much all the junk mail that comes in, but we’ve had to invest a small fortune in the equipment and software it takes to do that. We still have to spend time maintaining it. Before that, I spent hours and hours manually configuring spam filters I constructed myself. This has been going on for years. I think it was 1998 when I was interviewed by Computerworld magazine about the steps I was taking then to combat spam. It was nothing then, compared to what the situation is now.

I have finally decided what the ultimate solution to spam is. We must punish the people who buy things from spammers. People spam because it benefits them financially. If we imprison the buyers, then we put an end to the nightmare! I have a slogan for the bumper sticker: “Buy from a spammer and go to the slammer.” I would also like to volunteer to speak at elementary schools (we have to start educating kids at a young age).

Let’s rid the world of this sickness!