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Sunday, July 15, 2012

Krystal's Wedding

Home from Temecula for my cousin Krystal's wedding. Really beautiful event and she looked stunning and married a great guy (who happens to be named Matt)  Saw a lot of family and old friends who I hadn't seen in a long long time. That was fantastic. Just sorry that I could only briefly chat with some folks because time was so short and so many people to chat with. The plan is to keep in touch with many folks though. And a brief note to my cousin Eric..the Vikings plan to kick some 49er ass this year.

On to my health update. Still feeling great. Up late for the wedding and no worse for the wear. We saw Berenson on Friday. He's still happy with my progress. I'm switching to maintenance starting this Tuesday. Maintenance will be one day of infusion every other week. And we've eliminated the Treanda, which is the heavy duty chemo drug, and we've added an additional steroid to the mix, which I'll take orally at home. 'll continue to do regular blood work, monthly urine work and monthly Berenson visits. The plan is to keep me where I'm at.

We also saw a new kidney doctor. My kidneys are slowing improving, but they still have a ways to go.  We switched from Doc Zoller because of her negative attitude regarding my prospects for success. The new doctor, Levine, is someone we saw once before, last summer, when I was at my worst. Last summer I had creatinin of over 8 and was minutes away from doing dialysis. Truly...Zoller wanted me to start and I said ok. But I had a few minutes of thought and opted to wait. A year later, creatinin is currently 5 and still no dialysis. That's where I draw the line. Anyhow, Doc Levine was thrilled with my improvement since I saw him last year and said he never would have imagined my improvement if you had asked him after my visit with him last year. And he also said he's had lots of patients with kidneys in my condition, that have never had dialysis. Likely there is scar tissue on my kidneys and having normally functioning kidneys might not happen. Nonetheless, I'm super happy with the shift to Levine. He also said I need to lose weight.WTF? All my cancer doctors say putting weight on is good, but not Levine.  I know I've become a bit of a fat ass, but I didn't think a doctor would point it out to me. Eating light and healthy begins ASAP.

And that's about it.

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Berenson Oncology Success Rate

 Some reading about my myeloma specialist's success rate. A press release and an article from Targeted Oncology.