December 11, 2008:

My myeloma is stable after Cycle 10 of the CC-4047/Dexamethasone trial. Cool. But watch out for elevated liver enzymes AST and ALT.

This particular 28-day cycle may have been affected by several unusual circumstances: The Mayo test results don't indicate much change in the cancer numbers. M-Spike, the most significant number, is 1.0 g/dL, same as last month. In fact it has not changed much since August, the first time it dropped as low as 1.0. IgG is up from 1170 mg/dL to 1260, but for good reason, see below. Free lambda light chains are up 24% to 4.03 mg/dL, but kappa chains are up even more and the ratio actually went up a bit, so free light chains are probably not really up. The only scowl in the group photo is the elevated liver enzymes. Other blood numbers like red cells, hemoglobin, and platelets are as expected, with white cells and neutrophils increased as one might hope in response to a flu threat.

I go to Mayo every 28 days. I meet with Dr L every other time, otherwise with nurse practitioner KDS. This time it was Dr L. Here are a few subjects that came up: Here are some related links:

      My Myeloma     A discussion of my myeloma, not very technical.
My Treatment History Not technical.
My Test Charts Graphic displays of several key test results over time.
My Test Result Table Best with a wide browser window. Very "technical."

Other side effects of the two key drugs, CC-4047 and dexamethasone, are discussed in a previous post.

Here are a few specific test results:

Test Sep 16    Oct 16    Nov 13    Dec 11    Remarks
M-spike g/dL 1.0 0.9 1.0 1.0 Best tumor measure
IgG mg/dL 1180 1130 1170 1260 Variation is normal
L FLC mg/dL 2.64 3.14 3.25 4.03 Free light chains
Calcium mg/dL 9.7 9.6 9.8 1.1 Below 10.2 is best
Creat mg/dL 1.0 1.1 0.9 1.0 Kidney, lower is better
HGB g/dL 13.6 13.8 14.6 14.6 Hemoglobin, normal
RBC M/uL 3.90 3.97 4.19 4.20 Red cell count, low
WBC K/uL 5.3 4.4 4.3 5.3 White cells, normal

I'm still running 20 miles per week, getting set to increase that gradually back up to 40. Life is good.