Happy New Year.....

So it is a couple days after the New Year and I am back in Hawaii to finish up end of the year business, business. I was planning to and still wish I could, however I am not going to make it back to York before my return to City of Hope mid January. I would be rushed to finish up here, and feel that it is best not to push things by over traveling. I enjoyed catching up with so many of you last time I was home, and wish I had more time to visit everyone. That being said.....

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I had an easy time with my stem cell collection. It only took 2 days to collect over 12 million stem cells. I did not have side effects from the actually collection, but I did have sever back and bone pain from the Neupogen. We were told that this was a potential side effect (Serena even made a note of this) in our initial interview with the Oncologist at City of Hope, however we forgot do to the situation and information we were given during the interview. They dropped on us that I was eligible for a study that was being done at the hospital. The study involved TMI (total marrow irradiation) in conjunction with a second transplant. Kaiser had me under the impression that TMI was the norm, not "being studied". This information and the fact that we only had 2 days to make the decision whether to participate or not over shadowed other information that we were given. We decided not to take the radiation because it is radiation. The long term side effects of TMI will not be know for some time. Radiation is proven to be very effective in destroying bone marrow which would do the same to the cancer in the bone marrow, however they have only used TMI on 35 patients (not all with MM) since the study began 2 years ago. I may be a treatment that becomes the "norm" or found to cause more problems down the road. Now the back and bone pain were something else. I was back on the narc's and hobbling around for a couple days.

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That is behind us now and on January 18th (unless I get bumped because there are no beds) I will be admitted into the hospital to begin my treatment. Chemo on the 19th and 20th, and them I will receive my stem cells on or around the 23rd. It will all depend on how my system responds to the chemo.

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Physically I am doing pretty good. I have been off the revlimid for close to 2 months, and starting to have sternum pain again. My hickman cath. is doing fine. It is hard to shower and keep the dressing dry, and believe it or not I do shower every day (almost). I hope all is well with everyone. Best wishes for the New Year.