Day 97 - Test Results

Many times in life, we run into situations which are counterintuitive. In other words, things work backwards from what we would expect. You would expect a stem cell transplant to eliminate almost all cancer cells. But, 70% of the time, it doesn't work that way for one reason or another. For example, my plasma cell labeling index is 0.2% which is good in one respect because the disease progresses very, very slowly. However, the drug they use to kill the plasma cells, Melphalan, works especially well at killing fast growing cells. Therefore, if you have a slow growing cancer, you might not get as much of a response from the use of Melphalan as you would if you had a fast growing cancer. So, even though the slow growing disease is a good thing, it is resistant to treatment with Melphalan.

At 94 days post-transplant, my plasma cell count was reduced by 50% which is good. Since my disease seems to be progressing slowly, the plan now is to monitor it and do nothing until the conditions warrant action. Hopefully, by then, there will be new drug therapies we can use which will be more effective and have fewer side effects.