Home again home again jiggety-jog...

Well, our flight was late getting into Dallas so we were very late getting home to Sacramento, California (after midnight), so we are quite beat! Anyway, we met our doc and he had all the tests results except the gene array which takes 4 weeks and will determine which chemo they use to kill the cancer cells prior to stem cell, so the timing on that is fine, and doesn't change the overall treatment protocol for us, just a technical one for them. The PET scan results weren't back yet either, but also won't change the treatment. If there are any issues he will call us. So the customer service continued to amaze me. They had tape recorders in the examining room with tapes for your use to take home with you FREE! They handed me a complete stapled copy of ALL Dave's test results thus far to take with me. They will send me a copy of the doctor's summary to our doctor at home and they will send him copies of all the test results as well! Dave's bone marrow was not severely impacted, good news. He was mostly impacted in the skeleton, evidence of that in all the typical places, the skull and then ribs and back, but not hips (good). His biggest indicator of the myeloma was in his kidney function (protein levels) and the doctor was quite surprised he didn't experience renal failure, but now you would never know it ever happened or was even high at all. The doctor had several WOW moments looking over Dave's tests in June at diagnosis to where he is now. EXCELLENT RESPONSE to the treatment therapy. The doctor was impressed with our doctor's handling of Dave's Myeloma and the tests that he ran. He however was not happy about the radiation treatments Dave got, which is common unfortunately, but never, ever done at Little Rock!!!! Dave's radiation was "extensive". The reason they never do it, is it impedes their ability to recover stem cells for the stem cell transplant. Not impossible, but more arduous for Dave. I brought up using the hyperbaric treatments (high pressure oxygen under pressure) to assist with that, and to be used as a palliative measure for Dave's radiated areas, bone repair and bone marrow. He was quite impressed and said they didn't have one at Little Rock and was all for it! Did I say I liked this doctor? The time line requirements were also much better than we had thought and more confrontable. First, Dave "has time" and can schedule to his advantage for work and holidays and insurance. So he needs three, 3 week stints of time. Three weeks for stem cell collection. Three weeks for stem cell transplant and then 4 days in between the first and second stem cell transplant and another 3 weeks for the 2nd one - all over a 6 month timeframe. We can go for the three weeks and then go back whenever is convenient or we can do 6 weeks straight of stem cell collection and transplant. (They did their 7,000th stem cell transplant in October this year! They have it down.) Another interesting thing, they collect stem cells for 6 transplants not two, like everyone else. They have given "mini salvage transplants" to many of their long term patients to keep putting them back into remission as best they can. Their stats are WAY BETTER than any I have read. Right now, on average 12 years. This is with all age groups and all presentations of myeloma. Dave's youth and minimal impact of the disease and his great response to treatment make him an excellent candidate to live a good long while beyond the 12 years, as do many of their patients currently. They are close to a "cure" and they also are doing the myeloma vaccine regimen's I've been reading about. So we are happy and thrilled, though Dave of course, who has done little reading about his disease, took a while to realize this was basically very good news. I had to explain why to him in several conversations on our way home. He was so sweet, while sitting on the tarmac in Little Rock I got a text and it was from Dave, who was sitting next to me and it said, "Thank you." Sniff, sniff. Will let you know more later, but for now we are going to be busy planning out our schedule and Dave will be talking to his boss to see what works best in terms of that. I would like to get it all done over the holidays even though it will cost us more because we won't have been able to change our insurance, but work slows down from Thanksgiving (end of Nov) thru the new year holiday season, and I think it will be less impactful if Dave is doing it then and when the new year rolls around we'll be home and done with our first long stint. They have a library on the 10th floor for patients complete with computers, internet, telephones (long distance calls allowed), copy machines and fax machines. All designed for their patients/caregivers to be able to continue working while in Little Rock!