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. 
  

November 25, 2014.. We successfully made the 620 mile drive home today without any problems. We left at 4:45am and arrived home at 4:15pm. We passed through several road construction areas but we went through, there were no delays. We are very thankful for a safe trip.   

November 24, 2014.. Good news!! No maybe Great news! Dr Jethava said the myeloma is under control and all the test results were good. He is not changing anything at this time and I come back to Little Rock in 4 months for testing and if things look as good as they do now, he will stop my treatments completely. He also said my myeloma is back to smoldering. I had not thought of it this way but my myeloma markers are actually better than when I was first diagnosed. According to the MRI and PET scans, all focal lesions are now gone. He said some patients that reach this point go without treatment for as much as two years. When I stop smoldering, I will have to start treatment again. 

We were disappointed to find out I am going to have to change doctors.  Dr Jethava is taking responsibility for developing an allo stem cell transplant program (allo is using stem cells from a donor most of the time it is a sibling) at UAMS. I will see him on my return visit but I will have to see another doctor after that. I have confidence in him and really hate to change. 

We will leave to head home sometime way before daylight tomorrow morning. Reta has to play piano for a community Thanksgiving service at church Tuesday night. She does not have a backup to take her place.

I want to thank each of you for your prayers. I sincerely appreciate them. This Thanksgiving, we will have something extra special to be thankful for.  

November 23, 2014.. There was rain in Little Rock most of the day and we stayed at the apartment without going anywhere. We just stayed in and recovered from the previous days. There is no news to report today which I think is a good thing. 

Tomorrow, I have see Dr Jethava at 10am. 

I finished with a video I had edited at home and uploaded it today to share with family. Most of it was made at my nephew Gary's house in late October. The opening of the video was made in the Smokies on a camping trip earlier this year. If you want to view the video, click the link below. If it stops often, you will need to download it by clicking the download option and then run it when it is stored on your computer. I highly recommend my sister Audrey view the video.

Click Here to View the Video

November 22, 2014.. I got the final of my tests done today by completion of the PET scan. We got up at 4:00am to make sure we were there by the 6:30am appointment time. Getting to the PET area was not as easy was I thought it would be. We parked in the same parking building where we normally park. This was not the location in the instructions but we didn't know where the parking was located mentioned in the instructions. After we parked and started in the building, we found all doors were locked and not operating. We could not get into the building and didn't know what to do next. We finally saw a woman walking up the street toward the building and I ask her about getting into the building and told her I had a PET scan scheduled. She said I needed to be there on time because they mix the injection and it is good for only a little while after it is mixed. She said she would let me in so I could go to the PET area. We were really grateful for that and finally got to the PET area after winding all through the building. When we got to the PET area, the man on the desk told us he was afraid I was too late to get the test because the injection probably had expired. By then, we were 15 minutes late. He called one of the people in the testing area and found out they had given my injection to another person that had arrived early and I could take his injection. Whew! That was a close call! I filled out a paper form and got the radioactive glucose injection by iv. I had to wait for an hour after that before they could do the scan. The room I was waiting alone in had steel doors about 5 inches thick. They were too heavy to open by hand and had to be opened electrically. I don't know why the doors were so heavy and thick. I assume it was due to the radioactive liquids they inject there. After the wait, I was taken to the scanner. The scan took 45 minutes. I asked if the results would be available for the doctor for my 10am appointment Monday and he said it should be. 
After we finished, we celebrated by going to Cracker Barrel and getting breakfast. I am glad the testing is over. Tomorrow we have the whole day off so we will enjoy not being on a schedule.