Entry for March 27, 2015.. We left Little Rock at 8:40am to return home. We stopped for a burger in Memphis and visited with family for a bit. We arrived home at 10pm. The drive was uneventful but the traffic was heavier than it was on our way to Little Rock.

Something I meant to add to the post for Thursday.... When we got ready to leave the doctor's office Thursday, Dr Jethava gave both of us a hug. I thought that was pretty unusual. I liked him as my doctor and I will miss him. 

I will pick up on adding to this blog during our next trip to UAMS/MIRT in July.  

March 26, 2015.. I got some good news from the doctor today and got some disappointing news. I will explain the disappointing news first. We were told last November if I was doing as well when I returned to UAMS this month, he would take me off treatment. Today he said I should stay on the same treatment as I have been getting. The treatments are a combination of Thalidamide, Kyprolis and Dexamethazone. That means I will be getting 2 treatments a week during 3 weeks out of each month. I have been on this schedule since last June. He said I am smoldering now and the treatments are keeping me that way.  I don't disagree but I am very disappointed since we had planned a 6 week trip out west starting in late April. The treatments will eliminate any possibility of taking that trip or any long trip. 

The good news was he said he was pleased with how I am doing on the treatments and I am stable. In his written diagnosis, he stated I am in very good partial remission.

I will have to change from the doctor I have been seeing during this past year to another doctor since he is taking over other responsibilities and will not be seeing patients. I am changing to Dr Frits Van Rhee. He has been with UAMS/MIRT and treating myeloma for a long time compared to most of the other doctors at MIRT. 

We were saddened to hear a myeloma patient we had seen many times when we are here, especially when we were here for three and a half months, has passed away. She was only 42 years old and was from Austria. 

The doctor told me there are some new drugs coming soon for myeloma. They are antibody drugs and work totally different than what is available today. He thinks one of them will be available in about one year. 

We leave to come home tomorrow. We plan to take our time and arrive home tomorrow night sometime. I will make another post sometime after we get home.     

March 25, 2015.. Before I give a summary of today, I will post some photos of our apartment. I thought some photos might be a little more interesting than just text. I did not bring a camera with me so I made these with my phone. You can click each photo to make larger. 

As I have said before, our apartment is part of the Park Avenue complex where shops and apartments are located. Our apartment is in the second building in this photo. 

I was all dressed up yesterday getting ready to go to same day surgery for the bone marrow procurement.

Now for a summary for today.... I had my first appointment at 9am for the PET scan. The only thing you can have by mouth is water for 6 hours before the test.  Before they do the scan, they inject some radioactive glucose and then I had to wait for one hour before they could do the scan. I guess this is to allow the radioactive glucose to spread all over the body. After the one hour wait, they did the scan which took about 45 minutes to complete. After the scan, we hurried back to the apartment for lunch. I had another appointment at 1pm for a MRI scan. That scan also went with no problems and was completed in about 45 minutes.

I want to add a comment that I left out about the bone marrow biopsy procurement I had yesterday. They got enough sample to do a gene array. This will tell if I have high risk myeloma or low risk. On previous gene arrays I have had, it has shown that I have low risk but this can and does change sometimes.

Tomorrow, I will see the doctor and learn what the scans, biopsy, and lab tests showed and what the doctor thinks about how I am doing and hear what his plan for treatment will be. As anyone knows in situations like this, the whole trip is a tense time. While we are at home or on a fun trip, we can put myeloma out of mind much of the time but when we are here, it faces us directly. I look at each of the important items on my lab test results and hope that it did not go in the wrong direction. We are always very tense about hearing what the doctor has to say. Will it be good news or not so good news? We will not know until tomorrow.     

March 24, 2015.. Our schedule today was: pick up all of my appointments paperwork (called packet pickup) at 10am. We then went to the blood draw area where I donated about 11 vials of blood and delivered my 24 hour urine samples. We then met with a Physician's Assistant for him to make sure I was ok to have the sedated bone marrow biopsy procurement procedure. After that appointment, we went to the outpatient surgery area for the bone marrow procurement. That procedure went very well. I hope I never have to go back to the way I was getting it done before I began having the procedure via sedation. It was a very painful procedure before, and now I am asleep while it all is being done. I had 5 or 6 the old way. It takes more preparation now but it is worth it. After I finished up in recovery, we were able to leave. I was ready to eat and drink some water since I had not had anything since midnight last night. 

Tomorrow, I have a PET scan at 9am and a MRI at 1pm. I had to restrict what I had to eat tonight due to having the PET scan. That was harder since I was really hungry since I had not had anything to eat since yesterday evening.

Things went very smoothly today and hope they will tomorrow also. 

March 23, 2015..  I am sorry that I am late in posting this note. Last night I was just too tired to do it. We made the drive to Little Rock today (Monday) with no problems. The traffic was probably the lightest that we have had since we have been coming here. It was a rather pleasant drive but would have been more pleasant if we had not had to do the drive in sort of a rush. We needed to get here by 6pm before the office closed in order to pick up the key for the apartment. We did not make the 6pm deadline but got here about 10 minutes past. It is hard to believe we drove for 11 hours and were late by 10 minutes. We were able to get what we needed to get into the apartment anyway. We were fortunate enough to get an apartment again from Home Away from Home. We were surprised that we were able to get one since I had talked to the person that manages the apartments for the church and there was not anything available. One became available at the last minute. As I have said before, Home Away from Home is a wonderful church ministry where they lease a group of apartments at two different apartment complexes and then rent them out to myeloma patients while they are in Little Rock for treatment or testing. The apartment we have this time is one where we have never stayed before. It is very nice. The building is 2 years old and is located in a new shopping area. Within walking distance are many shops, eating places, Target, Cheddars etc. It is called Park Avenue and the apartments are called Park Avenue Lofts. It is close to UAMS where I have to go for testing and doctor visit. The rate is less than we would have paid for a hotel room. I like one of the security features. A person cannot get into the building without an electronic device to unlock one of the doors to the building. It is similar to an electronic remote to a car. We both feel very blessed to have been able to get an apartment here.