Take that Total Protein!

I know that people discover their Multilple Myeloma through various symptoms like broken bones, big masses where they should not be, recurring infections, etc. For me, three blood clots in two years (1 PE, 2 DVTs) signaled to us that we needed to see a hematologist....or Blood Doctor as I call them. Our Blood Doctor ran the labs and noticed that my Total Protein was near the upper range (8.2), but not too high. For some reason she decided to dig into the number a little bit and sure enough my IgG was 2360; normal being between 620-1520 according to UMHS. This significance of the 2360 wasn't that it was above the normal range, but rather, the issue was that it was above the normal range and I had no signs of illness/infection.



Here's some medical speak from a very non-medical minded person. The IgG (and IgM, IgA, etc.) are good old antibodies that occur in your body that make up your immune system. An elevated IgG would just signal that the immune system is kicked on and the body is following its natural defense system to do some damage (i.e. domination) of the intruders. The problem with my elevated IgG is that there are no intruders....that we know of (I like to think tiny dioxins are at the root of all of this, but I need to raise a lot of money and pay off some smart guy with a PhD to confirm my claim). So my body is pumping out proteins to create plasma cells to go dominate something that they can't find. So they basically collect in my bones, and eventually make it into my blood stream. So calcium from my bones gets pushed out into my bloodstream causing two main problems.
(1) Elevated calcium and protein levels can be hard on the kidney
(2) The calcium that's suppose to be in the bones, is not. Therefore one is prone to bone fractures.

So here is the spectacular news of the day. My Total Protein today was...(drum role please).... 7.6. Normal range is stated as 6.0 to 8.3.

Here is a chart of Phil's Total Protein over the last 15 months, which has finally hit smack dab in the middle of the normal range...hooray for Friday the 13th!



Did you find this post helpful? Please let me know, because I can talk all day on other fascinating topics like chemo side effects, what we learned in Little Rock, and other fun stuff that thanks to Multiple Myeloma I have learned. Please leave a comment so I know you are reading!

Blessings and domination to all,
Phil