March 1, 2012 Day +87

Today we received the results of the bone marrow biopsy from Tuesday, February 28. These results show how effective the Stem Cell Transplant was from back in December. We learned that the transplant had reduced over 95% of the bad plasma cells that were responsible for the Amyloidosis that have plagued me for close to four years. This was very good news! The plasma cells have generated damaging protein chains that interfere with nerves and muscles. These protein chains destroyed my heart and have caused damage to my facial nerves. While a 100% reduction would have been nice, we are pleased that I had such a good response. I anticipate that this will allow me to heal from this last procedure and gain some more strength before I have to go back on some maintenance chemo. I will need to be on some chemo for the rest of my life to hold back the Amyloid. New drugs are being developed that will keep the Amyloid down that have a very little side effects such as neuropathy or damage to the intestines and stomach.

The bone marrow biopsy procedure sounds more terrifying than it is. A small core sample of bone is removed from the hip, close to your tail bone. Local anesthetic makes this very tolerable (the dentist has inflicted more pain to me in a simple check up). The core sample will have portions of the marrow, stem cells, red and white blood cells, platelet cells and plasma cells. The nurse who performed the procedure at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance performed this for me in November. I told her my recovery from my stem cell transplant was a lot slower than I anticipated. She said having a stem cell transplant is similar to the environment around Mt. St Helen's back in 1980. The blast from the volcano sterilized the landscape, destroying forests, streams and wildlife. With time, those systems healed. Today the area of the blast has recovered with new vegetation and wildlife and streams are supporting fish populations again. She said your body was subjected to a tremendous amount of chemo and it will take some time to recover. I thought her "word picture" of the volcano blast zone was great and I told her I would use it in this blog. (Photo credit USGS photographer Tom Casadevall, 16 Sep 1980).