So I have a few health updates.. Six to eight weeks ago I was working out and damaged/broke a rib. Not sure if it actually broke then as I could still run and continued my 4 mile runs a couple of times a week. Then I got a cough and cold and so the rib hurt a bit more. I had it X-rayed and it was fractured...I guess the cough may have finished it off. Since it hurt to cough, I tried not to, but with a viral infection already underway it led to pneumonia. I think they caught that early and after 4 days of IV antibiotics I felt better. I followed this with 7 days of oral antibiotics. A couple of days after finishing them of course I got thrush... the down side to antibiotics...
So all that said these are problems that I can sort out with some R&R, except last Friday I managed to tweak my rib again... Heyhoo.
Three weeks ago I had an abnormal blood reading, it showed my Kappa Light Chain (KLC) number was up, this means cancer is back. My doc retested then did full skeleton survey, bone marrow biopsy and chest CT. The rib fracture didn't show signs of myeloma and the preliminary BMB results didn't show any abnormality. The CT is when they found pneumonia. So the plan was to check KLC in two weeks to see if the numbers trended up or down. My doctor thought the fracture and pneumonia could be giving a false reading. So two weeks later the numbers had gone up from 7 to 17 which confirmed the bad news.
Having spoken to Dr Koehne in NY, I moved my appt with him forward and will be getting a DLI next week. Following that the plan at the moment is to go back on the oral chemo Revlimid. This drug stopped working before but being that I had an allo transplant, it's effectiveness may be back.
Another patient on the trial has been put back in full remission following a DLI so that would be a long shot hope I think.
We have a lot of questions for Koehne and hopefully will have a much better grasp of what the future holds after our meeting with him. So I guess I'm still getting my head around the fact that 'round three' is on.
Brian, my thoughts are with you on this. I think God was tugging on my heart because I thought to myself tonight, "I should go read Brian's blog, I wonder how he's doing." I'm so glad I did. I will starting praying for you again, (not going to lie, I stopped) and that the doc in NY can give you some very straight answers. Prayers to Kristy and the kids too.
ReplyDeleteBetsy
Thanks Betsy
DeleteBrian, you know we are praying. Keep us posted.
ReplyDeleteJanet
Brian, so sorry to hear of this but we just know you can come back fighting. You've done it before, you'll do it again. As always, out thoughts are with you and the family and we can't wait for the blog post that says "Round Three - Brian takes the win!"
ReplyDeleteWith all our love,
Gary and Maria