We are just back from Mayo and it was a quick trip, just a
two day visit. It was a transplant trip
with a visit with hematology.
Good news, her lambda free light chains (amyloid) went from 6.7 in
January to 5.27! In case you don’t want to do the math that is a reduction of
1.5 (I round) and that is while she is still on weenie chemo!
They now want her to switch her anti-rejection meds from
tacro to Sirolimus.
Apparently tacro can have bad side effects on the kidneys if you are on
it a long time. She would have been
switched last year but, oh, a few things came up to delay that switch. They would like her switched by our next
visit which is in three months, yup I said it will be three months before we go back! Another benefit is that there is some
evidence that Sirolimus fights some types of cancer (skin, lymphoma,
etc). Since she has had both we like
that. Also her Pro BNP is now 382 and it was 693 one month ago. We didn’t ask why she still has an elevated
PBMP value but there was 0 concern about this, they were actually happy.
She had a cardiac biopsy and they take 5 samples, 4 samples
for rejection and 1 sample for amyloid testing (Congo Red). One of the samples
showed a rejection of 1R. Before you
start to get concerned, nobody cares about one 1R value, she has had 2 or 3
(can’t remember exactly) of them before and nobody cares. There are a myriad of reasons you can get a
1R value and almost all of them are less than trivial. Bottom line is 1R is ½ step
above 0 rejection, overall they consider her new heart as just dandy!
Thanks for checking in.
Hello Margaret and Jim,
ReplyDeleteGlad things are in check, happy you don't have to travel to the great white north that Illinois is keeping you comfortable in the white stuff the groundhog in Woodstock had it all wrong !
Hugs
Fran