A Blessing and a Curse

I got results of blood work done Monday today. M-spike went from .7 to .54 g/dl. In case you might like a refresher, the M-spike started at 2.3 g/dl back in August. I've come a long way in a few short months.

I was hoping I would be told I could get off the Revlimid and Dexamethasone today. Instead, I was told that one of two things must happen before I can get off the drugs I am taking. Either M-spike has to go to zero or it has to be the same for three consecutive months. So, even though it is low, and it could be low enough now, I won't know for at least two more months and most likely four or five or six more months or more after it is all said and done.

I complained profusely to my Oncologist about the side effects of the drugs which number around a dozen and a half and are making me somewhat impatient with the relentlessness of it. I was told to experiment with half a dose of steroid Thursday and half Monday. I was also told I should start getting used to the drugs. At times I think I am getting used to them but other times not. It seems like the highs and lows are not as high and low as they were at first.

If I were to stop taking the drugs now, the theory is that the cancer cells remaining are the most difficult to kill. Therefore, those cells would begin to multiply and be much more difficult or impossible to eradicate. No one really knows what REALLY is going on. We are depending on a test which monitors the "secretions" of the monoclonal plasma cells. Theoretically, the plasma cells do not become non-secretory because of the drugs.

Therefore, based on the M-spike, which is a measure of the protein secreted by the plasma cells, 80 percent or so of the monoclonal plasma cells have been eradicated. But we don't really know that. We are just inferring that and assuming there is a 100% correlation. The only way to find out for sure what has happened is to do a bone marrow biopsy and that isn't even a sure thing because the plasma cells tend to cluster in the marrow so there is some variability depending on where the sample is taken. I suppose, for now, we will just have to trust that the plasma cells have died.

Thanks for stopping by.

I'll talk to you later.

Cable or Dish -- Off Topic

There are a lot of things the "modern" generation can't identify with because things have always existed in their experience. Cable TV is one of those things that has always been around for them. When I was a kid growing up in rural Arkansas just outside the city limits of Little Rock, just having a TV and being able to watch one or two shows a day was just swell. For that matter, indoor plumbing was just swell too but that is another story. Howdy Doody and Captain Kangaroo were two of my all time favorites. I used to really look forward to checking in with the Mickey Mouse Club too. The rest of the time I was outside running around climbing trees scaring my mother half to death.

Back then, all you needed was a pole or tower with an antenna on top to pick up a station. If you were real tech savvy (or rich and could hire it done), you could install a rotor which would rotate your antenna in any direction by turning a knob on a remote control which was wired to the rotor. If you had one of those, you could pick up maybe two or three stations if you lived in a place which was relatively close to that many broadcast towers. Of course, the low tech answer to a directional antenna was to go outside and manually rotate the pole the antenna was mounted on. Believe it or not, there are still a few today who still use the outside antenna as their sole means of reception.

When I was in junior high or high school, I can remember hearing about cable TV and how wonderful it was to get all the channels and HBO. HBO was a real big deal back then. There was only one HBO. The cable company didn't offer several HBO's and SHO and GO and whatever else we have now. There are a dozen or more "premium" channels you can pay extra for that the modern generation has always had. I remember my sister getting cable in her apartment a couple of years after we graduated from high school. She had HBO and it seemed so wonderful to have that option of watching something so unfettered by commercials or censorship.

But getting back to the cable. It took a few years for cable companies to build the cable infrastructure. In the olden days, all you needed was a pole, an antenna, and a TV set. The cable promised more channels than you could ever possibly get with a pole of any length and antenna. Cable promised to eliminate the cluttered sky scape of unsightly outdoor antennas -- at a price of course. It seems price has always been a bone of contention with cable or whatever you choose to connect to your TV.

Lately, the price and feature competition between cable and dish has been heating up with the new digital technology. I suspect if dish had come before cable in the evolution of TV technology, cable would not exist today. Why would I say that? Well, think about all that is required to make cable go. First, you need a cable -- 2500 miles long or longer to cover the cable territory. Then you need many, many line amplifiers to boost the signal because the cable itself creates losses to the signal that have to be compensated for. You also need bucket trucks and skilled labor to troubleshoot problems, connect, and disconnect customers. You need a "head end" where everything originates from with a tall tower which has many Yagi antennas hanging off of it for long range reception of far away broadcast towers and several dishes for connection with satellite broadcasts. You also need a business office so the skilled labor, accountants, company executives, and receptionists will have a place to hang out and do business and drink coffee. In order for cable to exist in every city, all this and more is required to make it work. As you have probably guessed by now, this is a huge investment in infrastructure and overhead. In addition to salaries and deprecation, there are benefits and retirement.

On the other hand, there is dish (I won't specify which dish because there are a couple of choices). Dish is a lot like the simple antenna of the good old days or maybe in this case, the bad old days. All you need is a dish professionally installed (or not if you are real tech savvy like my neighbor who installed his own dish several years ago and loves it and would never in a million years switch to cable thank you very much). Of course you need a hugely expensive earth synchronous orbit satellite to beam the signal down. You need professional installers. Some of this work is done by locally owned independent dealers who drive around in unmarked pickup trucks with ladders sticking out the back or hanging off the sides and some by dealers who drive around in vans with the logo of the dish company painted on the side (I suspect this might be a franchise but don't really know). And last but not least, you need a corporate headquarters located in California somewhere with a toll free number or two and highly paid corporate executives.

Getting back to my supposition that maybe cable would not have existed if dish had been available. I haven't put the pencil to the profit and loss picture of cable versus dish but I suspect dish wins. Of course, dish prices are somewhat mitigated by competition from cable. Dish prices are also influenced by competition between dish companies. Therefore, if dish had come before cable, what we might be seeing now is a dish mounted to every house and apartment building with several dish "networks" advertising and competing for our business. We would also see much less cable strung on poles running all over town.

To switch or not to switch, that is the question. And believe me, the dish and cable marketing folks are out to make you ask yourself that question often. A lot of my friends made the switch from cable to dish a long time ago. The cable company is trying to compete by offering phone service. Of course, everything they offer is at a temporary reduced price usually six months then it goes up. AT&T is desperately trying to get customers to use their services and is offering some very tempting bundle packages with $5 discounts to the individual services. I've been using bundled services with my Cingular phone and saving on the wireless bill for a couple of years.

I did a thorough analysis of my current services cost and compared that with AT&T bundled services and decided I could save at least $16 a month and maybe more. I would also get $200 cash back for switching fom cable to dish and $150 in rebates if I switched from cable to DSL internet. As you can see, AT&T makes a deal you almost can't refuse. I tried to request High Speed internet and DirecTV from the web site in order to get the best deal but something went wrong so I had to call them next day. Good thing I did too, they told me there was a new service which offered unlimited long distance combined with 3 Mbps High Speed internet, that's DSL Extreme. DSL Ultra is where they like for you to start at 1.5 Mbps. The cheapest service is DSL Lite but it is so void of features it isn't where you would want to start.

Anyway, the person I was talking to on the phone told me the new service combined unlimited long distance with DSL Extreme for $65 plus tax and fees. That is the same speed service I was getting from cable for a lot less money and after you subtract the $.05 per minute long distance I was paying you get a deal you can't refuse. I have discovered, as I have been told, 3 Mbps from cable is variable but 3 Mbps from DSL is fixed and therefore faster and they are right. There is a noticeable difference between cable and DSL so DSL wins the speed race.

If you have read this far, you can see I have joined the ranks of those switching from cable to dish. I resisted switching for a long time I suppose because I may have had a sentimental attachment and loyalty engendered by the fact that I lived through the technological evolution of cable. In a way, I regretted walking out on the old way of life but it was getting to be more and more a case of what have you done for me lately and about all I could come up with was to raise prices yet again without a significant increase in services with about the only justification being, "We haven't done this to you in a good long while."

If you have been thinking about switching from cable to dish, I don't think you will regret it especially if you go from "basic" analog cable to dish which is the new digital. I also think cable (at least cable in my town) is way over priced for what you get. I also think most internet service is way over priced but that is another story.

Thanks again for stopping by.