Visit to the Mayo Clinic

Sockeye salmon in the Columbia River

The Mayo

Last week I traveled to Minnesota to visit the Mayo Clinic for three days to see if I could get some answers on my disease.  I went with my good friend, Jerry, who did a great job of taking care of me and keeping me entertained. Because I have gotten so weak, I needed help getting around in the airports and for someone to drive between Minneapolis to Rochester.  It is really nice to have a friend so helpful and caring as he was.  Plus he kept me on my toes with his humor.

We traveled to the Mayo hoping to find the “silver bullet” for getting the upper hand on the plasma cells that are producing the bad proteins that are damaging my muscles and nerves.  Unfortunately that did not happen.  The Mayo did not have any miracle drugs or treatments that I have not already been on.  They recommended drugs like Revlimid, Velcade, Cytoxan and Dexamethasone that are the same treatments I have seen.  We had a chance to hear from very experienced doctors and nurses who have seen many people with AL Amyloidosis.  I was reminded of the virulence of this disease.  One good thing we learned was there is a reduction of the damaging protein that is carried around by my blood.  Also, the doctors at the Mayo were uncertain if my facial nerve damage is caused by the Amyloid or a virus.  They have not seen AL Amy presented in this manner before.  A Bone Marrow Biopsy did show the plasma cells that create the damaging proteins have increased since my stem cell transplant in December.  Their recommendation for now is to continue monitoring the level of damaging proteins and start chemo once they reach a certain level in the blood stream.  So for now I get a break from the side effects of the toxic drugs, but I will be back on some form of chemo in the future. 

The second thing I want to post here is the huge return of sockeye salmon in the Columbia River that are migrating past nine dams and on their way into Canada to spawn in the Okanogan (is spelled Okanagan in Canada) River.  The current count at the first dam on the Columbia, Bonneville Dam, is well over a half million sockeye.  This will be the largest return ever in the 75 years of counting salmon at Bonneville.  There are a few reasons for this very large return.  There have been very favorable conditions in the Pacific Ocean for the young fish as they migrated out of the Columbia to start the ocean phase of their life.  The second and probably more important reason is a unique management tool for river flows and lake habitat conditions developed by a consortium of Canadian fisheries agencies and First Nations in the Okanagan area.  The program, referred to as the Fish/Water Management Tool, has proven to be most effective to protect both sockeye salmon and Kokanee during a very critical period of their life cycle.  The tool monitors river discharge, water temperatures, oxygen levels, lake elevations, recreation and irrigation needs and places the information in a computer program that tracks criteria where damage may occur both biological or societal events.  The program has helped reduce property damage from flooding, maintain proper lake levels for recreation needs and protect fish from harsh environmental situations.  The success of this program has caught the attention of fisheries and water managers around the world.  If you have an opportunity to travel into the Penticton, British Columbia area this fall, it would be worth a visit to see the salmon spawning in numbers that have not been seen for some time.  (Here is a link to a document from 2005 that describes how the Fish/Water Management Tool worked for that given water year).