March 2011 - Induction - Cycle 2 - Day 1

Here we go with cycle 2 of treatments. Boy I was nervous going to the doctor today, doctors make me nervous anyway; I have been told by my primary doctor that I have white coat syndrome. Today the doctor could have told me the treatments are not going as well as expected or he could have said things are working as planned. The only problem we didn't know what that would be until 1:15.

The test they use to test the effectiveness of the treatments is the Beta 2 Microglobin blood test. I can't explain really what this test is all I know is my numbers when I started and my numbers after cycle 1, along with the valid ranges. The valid range is any number less than 2.51. Before I started treatments my number was 5.53. Today, after cycle 1 treatments my number was 2.34. Looks like according to this test I have responded well to cycle 1 treatments. There will be additional tests after cycle 2 to test for free light chains that spill into the urine, which I currently or had a very large number of these before I started treatment.

Blood counts for today; which most numbers were up from Thursday. WBC dropped to 1.9, but grans were up to 1.6 I really don't understand why the WBC dropped to 1.9, but the grans seem to be more important for fighting infections, so that is good. Hemoglobin was up to 12.1 the highest it has been in a year and platelets are up to 183 highest in two years.

I also found out today I should not be taking any multivitamins or eating any antioxidants while on treatment. Antioxidants make it harder to kill the bad cells, which makes the drugs less affective. Bye bye vitamin water and green tea, though I did not consume large amounts of these, how much more liquids can one really consume after 3 liters of water.

Both the doctor and nurse told me that I can expect to be more tired during cycle 2, I can deal with that if we can achieve the net result.

I thought it was courious when I was updating my blog a John Mayer song came on, the title was "In Repair" The song has another meaning, but seems to apply in many ways. A line in the song is "I'm in repair i'm not together but I am getting there".

Today was a good day!

Thanks for everyones prayers, they must be working.

Today gives us hope.