Quote:
Originally Posted by DannyOcean_
If you don't mind, I have a question.
At one point, you say that your cancer is uncurable. But then later (to your friend) you said something like "but mine is treatable"
Can you clarify that? Does this cancer ever completely go away? If yes, awesome. If no, in what shape or form can you enter remission?
I am not a doctor - but as I understand it.
The problem plasma cells are clones of each other. Normally your body spots a problem(gonorrhea) it produces a specific plasma cell to deal with the problem and clones cells to go hunting for that problem.
So with Mulitple Myeloma the body produces clones in too large a number of one specific type of plasma cell/protien. The result is at the current time I likely have 1.2 billion clones of one plasma cell. They are everywhere. AND they are causing themselves to reproduce.
Incurable ....can't kill them all without killing me.
So the treatment is kill as many a possible and try to get the bone marrow back to producing normal volumes of other stuff....Monitor and when(not if) the balance swings out again...repeat. Usually a blood protien is monitored monthly and a rise is spotted early...and you have time to decide how and when to act. Sometimes they put you on a drug to slow the rise until it reaches a level that starts to do damage. This can be months or years.
Remission - Depends. Some Plasma cells resist some drugs, some come back faster.. Some people, the bone marrow transplants give 8 years remssion...some get zero. Some treatments have nasty ongoing side effects(
Peripheral neuropathy - numbness and pain in hands and feet seems to be popular)
Good remission stories are 8-10 years before next treatment
Bad are 1-2 years.
The plasma cells also become resisitant, so last rounds drugs, may not work this round. Transplant may work only once or twice..and then not.
Luckily big Pharma seems to see profit in the area and has lots of drugs coming in.
In my case the good - is I have this chromosome swap 14-4 that a specific drug, Valcade, treats very well and remission times have been good. 5 years ago the drug, Valcade, was not used and I would be in the "don't look good" catigory. The bad is this is a drug where neuropathy is a issue.
Another drug used a lot is thalidomide for those born in the 60s.