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Friday, February 23, 2018

Back At It

Recovered from flu. I had to skip two weeks of treatment.  I'm on maintenance, so I do darzalex once every four weeks. Missing two weeks means it's been 6 weeks since last infusion. But today I'm back it. We did labs earlier in the week and myeloma numbers look tremendous. Note I also take 1 mg of pomalyst for 21 days followed by 7 days off.  Again with rhe flu, it' s 3 weeks since last pomalyst.

Note that darlazex is infusion and pomalyst is oral. With darzalex once I hit my insurance out of pocket payment, I pay nothing. Pomalsyt, while it is chemo, is treated as any other prescription and doesn't count against my out of pocket budget.  So when folks discuss parity for oral chemo, this is what they are talking about.  Oral chemo is fucking expensive and can bankrupt folks.  I'm fortunate that a} I get copay assistance and b} I have good insurance that pays for the majority of my prescriptions costs. Nonetheless, it aint cheap.

Also, I got a call from my dermotolgist the other day, regarding the warts on my fingertips.  My immune system is fairly taxed and things like warts and skin cancers is a never ending fight.  We've tried several topicals to deal with the wart and they just keep coming on back. But the dermo read about a treatment that has been successful in keeping them away. I started this yesterday. I sit for two hours with a powerful ointment followed by 4 minutes under a powerful led light that activates the ointment. I'll do this monthly and see where it gets.  I did my first light treatment yesterday and for the following 48 hours I need to wear gloves when outside, otherwise the sun will reactivate the ointment and it will burn like heck.  After 48 hours I'll be good without gloves.

Obviously I'm back at it.







1 comment:

Berenson Oncology Success Rate

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