August 2019 update

Hi folks, it has been too long.. As I’ve procrastinated as the amount of stuff that I need to update you on has grown, and this has made me even more reluctant to type it all out. So now you’re just going to get the highlights.

My Revlimid was reduced from 15mg to 10mg. In the second and third week of my cycle (21 days on/7 days off), I was getting super exhausted, so the doc reduced the dosage. So far so good.

Travel: since my last update, I’ve been to LA twice, Vegas once, Europe twice, and NYC once. Most of that has been incident-free except for the Europe trip I just got back from. I was in a lot of pain and super sick, so I flew back a day early and went to the ER. My shoulder felt so awful. I was having lots of bone pain there, and bone aches all over. I was sure it was a relapse.

X-ray was negative, and the shoulder is probably tendinitis. The bone aches were a combination of getting sick and a normal side-effect of the Revlimid and my ongoing rebuild of my immune system. I recovered from the illness without antibiotics.

It wasn’t a relapse.. I’m still in remission, with no measurable M-spike. My light chains are normal. My IgGs are now in the 700’s, so I’m actually above the low-normal threshold (which is a good immune system marker). I’ll see the doctor in September for another checkup, and it looks like we’re skipping my bone-marrow biopsy in August, so I’d guess the next one is in early 2020.

I just started on a small dose of Testosterone to help me with my sluggishness. Too early to tell if it’s helping.

My kidney numbers have stabilized, but the liver numbers are a bit out of range. I think that’s mostly because of all of the over-the-counter stuff I was taking when I got sick. I’m going to start taking a liver supplement again just for a bit of extra help. I stopped taking milk thistle when I was diagnosed. I just ordered some of this stuff which is supposed to be really good, and I’m sure it will help.

Other than that, work is crazy in a good way and is going well. Outside of the travel, I haven’t really had a lot of chances to get out much. We’re bringing our boys to the World Dog Surfing Championships tomorrow (as spectators, not participants), which is conveniently happening about 5 minutes from our house. That should be a blast.

Here’s a pic of Pickle from a recent trip to the Exploratorium (Rachel took him there while I was traveling)