Cycle Two.

Hey everyone. We've re-joined the rest of the world albeit in limited capacity and wanted to give you all an update on that whole pesky myeloma situation. That's why we're all here after all, right?


First thing's first... constipation is no longer an issue. Can we just talk for a moment about how awful that whole hospital fiasco was? It was awful. Okay. Now let's never revisit it again.

We are in the infusion center as I type. Cycle two began on Tuesday. For those of you who are wondering how this whole cycle thing works, here's the breakdown.

Phil goes in to the infusion center at the hospital where, by the way, we are not allowed to shoot video and gets chemo drugs via an IV. He will be doing four 3-week cycles, during which he goes for infusions on Tuedays and Fridays on weeks one and two, then has the third week off. Each week starts on a Tuesday and ends on the following Monday. On Tuesdays and Fridays he gets Velcade. On the first Friday of the cycle he gets Doxil. This current cycle is cycle two. I don't expect you to remember all of that, and there will be no test. Just wanted to let you all know what exactly we're doing here.

Now for the super awesome news. We got the cycle one results back and Phil's numbers look fantastic.

M-Protein is now 1.9 (previous was 3.2)
Kappa Free lite --> 43.5 (was 83.6)
Kappa/Lambda Ratio --> 114.47 ( was 491.7)
IgG --> 2430 ( was 3260)

There are lots of places you can go to find out what these things mean, but the important thing is that these numbers are all coming down significantly. And after just one (incomplete) cycle! This is really, really good.

We are doing generally well. It's been a tough comeback from a couple weeks ago but we've recently removed a couple of chronically stressful situations from our lives and that has lightened the load quite a bit. Plus we have friends and family members who just kind of show up and help (Thank you! We love you!) and that allows us to focus on the important things, like whether or not Phil has remembered to take his laxatives. Not even kidding.

Also, as another high point to be mentioned, we heard the baby's heartbeat this afternoon at my midwife visit. I had a moment of panic like oh dear there's really a baby in there which means we're going to have three- THREE but then I realized that it's really pretty awesome and I was also relieved that there was just one. So now I'm cool.

I think that's everything for now, folks. I'll try to update more often now that I'm out of my padded room.