April 8, 2013 – Even More Good News – Weenie Chemo is Still Doing a Fine Job

Mayo is nice, they let you mail it in!  From time to time Mayo wants blood work done at their lab and lets you get the blood drawn locally and then mail the blood to them.  Recently Margaret mailed some blood and we got the results at the end of last week.  The chemo is still working and doing a darn good job.  Her FLC (Free Light Chain – measure of amyloid) was down to 3.94 and it was 3.91 at the completion of the first time she was on chemo right after diagnosis. Huh, what the heck does all that mean?  It means that her amyloid numbers are down to the lowest they have been since diagnosis (yes 3.94 = 3.91 in the docs eyes, my eyes too), this is GREAT NEWS!  The current plan is to keep up the weenie chemo and see how low it will go.  She has very few side effects from the Velcade (chemo) so stay the course is the direction we are going.

More good news!  What, there is even more good news… You betcha!  She has successfully transferred off of tacro (anti rejection med) and on to Sirolimus.  Sirolimus is a once a day pill so that is 1 less pill a day. As it turns out she is on less meds now than she was pre-transplant, even with the new chemo and since going from tacro to Sirolimus now it is even less pills per day.  ANother advantage of Sirolimus is that there is some evidence that Sirolimus fights some types of cancer (skin, lymphoma, etc) and being immunosupressed these are real risks, we have already seen the bad side of lymphoma (PTLD - Post-Transplant Lymphoproliferative Disease) and already had some skin cancer taken off her so any plan that will help keep that away is a good plan in my book.

TTFN.