Beth Morgan Multiple Myeloma Treatment Blog
My life as a myeloma patient for almost two decades
It was about 70 degrees here today, which was fabulous. We walked to a nearby restaurant for lunch and didn’t need our coats.
I tried out a new chair at work. I need something on which I can put up my feet. When they’re not up, I have an increase in that neuropathic pain. I’m going to pile some pillows up on the foot rest tomorrow to see if that helps. Otto suggested some T.E.D. socks, so I’m going to look for them next time I’m out someplace.
I don’t have caffeine very often anymore. On Friday night I had a caffeinated soft drink, and just couldn’t sleep. Instead of just trying to sleep, I stayed up to upgrade a machine. The upgrade didn’t go as smoothly as I planned, and I ended up being up until after 7 AM. Needless to say, I’m very tired today.
Is there anyone else who gets email in their dreams? I’ve had a few dreams in the last couple of months in which I’ve received email messages. I have a pretty vivid memory of what the messages said, too.
The only thing I have to report today is that my WBC is 4.7! Can you believe it? As soon as I get the rest of the results, I’ll post them. It was mentioned that I might get to go home earlier than predicted.
I forgot to mention that I had my head shaved on Saturday. My hair started to fall out some, so my sister went ahead and gave me a buzz cut. Since then, it’s been falling out like crazy. I could be bald in a few days.
I’m not going to lie. the Neupogen shots can cause bone pain. It’s not pleasant. I have percocet to take, and have had a few today. This bone pain isn’t like anything I’ve felt before, except when I had those 10 days of Neupogen shots before. It’s the result of the crowding of the bone marrow. One nurse told me that this is the kind of pain experienced by some leukiemia patients when their white cells are proliferating out of control.
I’m here at Duke, waiting to see if I’m ready to start apheresis today. I had my blood drawn at about 7:30. At 9:30, they’ll have some counts back. If they’re high enough, I can start. If not, I go back home and come back tomorrow. I don’t have as much bone pain this time as I did last year, but I don’t know how important that is. The nurses said, the more miserable I am, the better. Last year I had 10 days of neupogen shots. This time, I’ve had 5 days of leukine and 2 of neupogen. One of them was just at 5 AM, so it may not count.
It’s been inexcusably hot here lately. This picture is from yesterday afternoon. Today is supposed to be better, although the forecast still indicated a high of 101 F. I don’t know if it will get that hot though, because it’s only 88 F at 1:00 PM. Temperatures are supposed to be in the 90s after this, for the next several days. We need rain!
This post has a picture I took of the outside temperature indicator in my car on Tuesday.
Martha let me know that there were only 5% plasma cells in my bone marrow, according to the report generated from the bone marrow aspiration done on Monday. That’s the lowest I’ve had since dx. It was 60% then, and was 6% in May when I was at the Mayo Clinic. Before that, the lowest it had been was 20% about 2 years ago.
Before I started my last cycle of Velcade and Doxil, I had blood drawn at Duke. Since then, I’ve had no treatment. I’ve been waiting to undergo high dose chemo and stem cell rescue. These are the values from the last two reports.
M-spikes: 0.20 + 0.14 = 0.34 g/dL
IgA: 534 mg/dL [46-287]
IgG: 447 mg/dL [588-1573]
IgM: 25 mg/dL [57-237]
IgE: 11 IU/mL [4-269]
Beta-2 Microglobulin: 1.7 mg/L [<2.0]
IG Free light chain kappa: 0.11 mg/dL [0.33-194]
IG Free light chain lambda: 1.31 mg/dL [0.57-2.63]
IG FLC Kappa/Lambda ratio: 0.08 [0.26-1.65]
M-spikes: 0.28 g/dL + 0.12 g/dL = 0.4 g/dL
IgA: 668 mg/dL [46-287]
IgG: 381 mg/dL [588-1573]
IgM: 28 mg/dL [57-237]
IgE: 10 IU/mL [4-269]
Beta-2 Microglobulin: 1.8 mg/L [<2.0]
IG Free light chain kappa: 0.01 mg/dL [0.33-194]
IG Free light chain lambda: 1.95 mg/dL [0.57-2.63]
IG FLC Kappa/Lambda ratio: 0.01 [0.26-1.65]