When it rains, it pours. Or: The Old Grey Mare. Or: Interesting numbers on Velcade.

We are getting a Old Testament-style storm in LA right now. In one sense it's good because the state needs precipitation. But it's REALLY dumping. And the ol' house is leaking. My beloved wine cellar has water all over the floor. Our den has water coming in. Our breakfast nook has a six foot by one foot strip of paint that has bubbled and is bursting. This was in an area where I paid to have the roof fixed. I'm concerned that we will have to have our dry wall torn out and replaced. We can ill afford this right now...but them's the breaks.

So the Old Grey Mare of the house ain't what she used to be. And neither is my immune system. My son got sick yesterday. Despite copious amounts of handwash, etc. I'm now sick. Readers may recall it took me three damn weeks to get over my cold last time...and that was with a healthy white count.

[ Editor's note: To be clear, while I kvetch a bit about the leaks here, my intent is to use the leaky house as a metaphor for my suboptimal immune system -- neither of them are what they used to be, hence the "Old Grey Mare" reference. Please don't think I'm being so petty as to complain about a leaky house on a blog dedicated to battling cancer, read by fellow cancer sufferers! ]

Which brings me to my next observation: yesterday's labs were good for platelets, which recovered to 148, and not so good for hemoglobin (12.0, now low) or whites (3.1, quite low). When combined with my immunglobulin (low, thank God!) it means I'm not gonna fight this illness very well.

Since I have been off revlimid for the week, and since platelets rebounded, I am beginning to believe the white and red suppression comes from Velcade (which I have stayed on). This is all part of the price to pay to eliminate the disease -- and indeed, unless one doesn't believe in maintenance therapy (and there are those that don't, though the number is less than it was even a year ago) one is likely to be on some combination of this stuff whether or not one goes for the aggressive / cure-it / Arkansas approach or a less aggressive control approach.

I'm hoping Tamiflu is enough. If not, evidently last time one of the clinicians in Arkanas (CR, for those following the blog...and the CR in this case doesn't stand for Complete Remission!) mentioned to the wife that he had something that would clear up my symptoms almost immediately. Of course this didn't occur until around day 17 of my 21 day cold. But *this* time I may give him a buzz earlier.

When I was at GD's office yesterday, once again they didn't give me lab results from a week ago. This is frustrating and I told them so. I'm building up to really letting them have it but I'll deal with that after I get back from next week's tests in Arkansas. The nurse who administers my Velcade (and she is pretty good at accessing the port, though it's more painful than the other nurse that used to do it) gave me a briefing she had gotten about a bunch of Velcade trials. She didn't understand most of it.

Anyhow, there's a trial called VISTA. It began in 2005. People treated with Melphalan and Prednisone were in one arm, people treated with these two plus Velcade were treated in another.

* 3-year overall survival was 72% for those with Velcade, 59% without.

* The median "treatment-free interval" was a whopping 16.6 months (I'm being sarcastic) with Velcade and 8.4 months without.

Translation: on Velcade and these other drugs alone, this disease kills a lot of people, and it comes back relatively quickly.

Not good enough. Hence Revlimid and Thalidomide, for one. Hence a stronger steroid, for another.

The same drugs that suppress my immune system. Hmm....

Pretty easy trade-off. Bring on the TheraFlu! :)