The good news is that the results from the MRI on Wednesday,
6/14, are in, and the results are great!
They were concerned about spots on my liver that might have been metastases
of the cancer on my Ampulla. If they had
stayed the same size or gotten bigger, then they would be metastases. But in fact they got smaller, so they
probably were a result of the infection I had when my bile duct was
blocked. So, this means that they can
concentrate on removing the growth itself.
Either through surgery or through immunotherapy. They were going to do genetic analysis. If I have the genes that enable this cancer
(which is statistically improbable) then immunotherapy is preferred. The downside of that eventuality is that
Brian and Andrew and their kids will have to worry about the same genes. We meet with Dr. Schlecter first thing on
Monday to determine what my treatment will be.
Meanwhile they are scheduling surgery on June 28th.
Right now I am rooting for the immunotherapy. Apparently it is quite targeted and effective,
if the cancer is caused by those genes.
The alternative is a Whipple surgery.
This is a monster surgery, lasting up to 6 hours, and doing major
reconstruction of your upper GI tract.
Google it to get a sense of how complex it is. I have been told that the growth I have is
pre-cancerous and not highly developed.
Actually, they say it is lucky that the growth blocked my bile duct so
that the growth was discovered. Growths
in that area have no symptoms, so they can grow for years without being
detected. So mine was detected
relatively early. My question (which I
will ask Dr. Schlecter tomorrow) is with a relatively young growth, isn’t a
whipple surgery an extreme solution?
Yes, the growth was strong enough to block my duct, but the biopsy says
it is pre-cancerous and if it was discovered at an early stage, mightn’t there
be a less extreme solution to correct it?
The bad news is that my Multiple Myeloma is coming back
strong. Tuesday they took blood samples
for a variety of tests. The key test
takes 2-3 days to come back. On Thursday
evening I checked the BIDMC Patient Site, and saw that my Free Lambda was
803. During the analysis of my illness
the Multiple Myeloma drugs were suspended.
I had just started Ninlaro and Revlimid on Tuesday, 5/23. Friday, 5/26, those were stopped. 5/23 my Free Lambda was 345. The prior 2 tests were 411 and 419, so the
trend had been down. But 803 reverses
that trend in an extreme way. Here is
the latest graph:
That is a dramatic uptick at the end. We thought that we were in dangerous
territory when the readings were in the 400’s. After all the maximum of the normal range is
26, so 419 is 16 times the normal max. To double that puts us well into an area of
major concern. I sent an email to Dr.
Levine Thursday night and followed up with a couple of phone calls Friday. Finally after 4PM Dr. Levine called me back
and told me to resume the Multiple Myeloma medicines. So I took a Ninlaro pill Friday night, as
well as Revlimid and Dexamethasone.
Let’s hope it has a dramatic effect on the next free lambda reading – in
the opposite direction.
So the drama continues.
I hope to ease up on the drama, but there will continue to be news until
the ampullary adenoma is dealt with.
I’ll keep you posted.
No comments:
Post a Comment