Long story short, I remain in complete remission. Blood work was good. MRI showed that one of the five original active lesions -- the one in my left shoulder which was the first pain I felt associated with this disease -- has completely resolved. The other four are shrinking, albeit slowly.
My bone marrow came back with 7% plasma cells, and about 3% plasma in the core marrow. This crept up a bit and made me nervous but it was negative for Myeloma and neither BB nor Dr. U, his new assistant guy, were concerned.
BB was impatient for more progress in the bone healing, but he noted in his dictation that bone healing lags complete remission in the blood and that the median time from complete remission to resolution of lesions is 18 months, per their research. I am a year into CR, so hopefully within six months my bones will be fully healed.
He was sufficiently impatient that he looked into whether or not he could increase my Revlimid dosage while keeping me on protocol. But protocol is a maximum of 15mg 21 days a month, which is what I am on. Now I know he would take me off protocol immediately if he needed to do so in order to improve my outcome, and the fact that he did not do so made me feel a little better -- although I will admit to some nervousness between the plasma cell increase (I was below 5% before) and this other fact.
I will return in four months, now, not every three months. And hopefully we will see more improvement in the bones at that time. He thought another course of Zometa would not be a good idea, for what it's worth.
Lastly, I did ask folks about Maca root and nobody had heard of it. Still not sure what to do there...
Enjoy the rest of your weekends!
