Here is my latest set of labs, posted super late. I went on vacation and I didn’t have time to post them before I went. Light chains or M band weren’t run. My doctor’s office really screwed up all my lab orders, from not having them at all or trying to run tests they weren’t supposed to do. They had it set up to run a Hep B test, daily, if I wanted to get stuck every day and not something simple, like a CBC.
Nothing too exciting with my labs. I’m not too thrilled with my Red blood cells, Hematocrit and Hemoglobin. Although, I’m not really that far from the transplant in reality and my blood still gets punched in the face every 2 weeks. Maybe I need to eat more beets and goji berries.
I thought it may be interesting for Myeloma people to see my stem cell transplant labs. It’s a ton of data, there is a scroll bar on the bottom of each table, but it gives a pretty good picture. There are blanks on the “cytes and phils” because there weren’t any to measure at a certain point.
Stem cell collection on 3/31 (note the sky high white blood cells to be collected)
High Dose Chemo on 4/11
Stem Cell Infusion on 4/13 (interesting to see the decline and then the climb)
NAME (STANDARD RANGE)
3/20/23
3/31/23
4/10/23
4/13/23
4/14/23
4/15/23
4/16/23
4/17/23
4/18/23
4/19/23
4/20/23
4/21/23
4/22/23
4/23/23
4/24/23
4/26/23
5/2/23
5/11/23
Basophil % (%)
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.0
0.3
0.2
Basophil, Absolute (0.00 – 0.25 K/uL)
0.01
0.01
0.01
0.00
0.01
0.01
Eosinophil % (%)
1.8
0.8
0.2
1.0
0.3
5.9
Eosinophil, Absolute (0.05 – 0.55 K/uL)
0.10
0.04
0.01
0.03
0.01
0.24
Hematocrit (40.0 – 52.0 %)
33.3
36.8
32.6
30.9
29.7
29.3
27.9
28.4
27.2
25.7
23.4
21.7
21.5
19.5
20.7
21.1
25.1
28.3
Hemoglobin (13.5 – 17.7 g/dL)
12.2
13.2
11.9
11.1
10.5
10.6
10.3
10.5
10.3
10.0
9.2
8.5
8.1
7.4
7.6
8.0
9.0
10.2
Imm. Granulocyte, % (0.0 – 0.7 %)
0.4
0.2
0.2
0.7
0.6
0.2
Imm. Granulocyte, Abs (0.00 – 0.06 K/uL)
0.02
0.01
0.01
0.02
0.02
0.01
Lymphocyte % (%)
18.1
18.0
7.4
1.4
26.1
27.7
Lymphocyte, Absolute (1.00 – 3.00 K/uL)
1.02
0.92
0.31
0.04
0.87
1.13
MCH (27.0 – 34.0 pg)
34.0
34.3
33.7
33.5
33.8
33.4
33.2
33.0
33.9
34.0
33.9
33.5
32.4
33.2
31.9
33.5
33.3
34.1
MCHC (32.0 – 36.0 g/dL)
36.6
35.9
36.5
35.9
35.4
36.2
36.9
37.0
37.9
38.9
39.3
39.2
37.7
37.9
36.7
37.9
35.9
36.0
MCV (82.0 – 98.0 fL)
92.8
95.6
92.4
93.4
95.5
92.4
90.0
89.3
89.5
87.4
86.3
85.4
86.0
87.4
87.0
88.3
93.0
94.6
Monocyte % (%)
9.0
7.0
3.3
0.0
22.2
17.6
Monocyte, Absolute (0.30 – 0.95 K/uL)
0.51
0.36
0.14
0.00
0.74
0.72
Neutrophil % (%)
70.5
73.8
88.7
96.9
50.5
48.4
Neutrophil, Absolute (1.70 – 6.70 K/uL)
3.98
3.78
3.72
2.77
1.68
1.97
nRBC, Abs (K/uL)
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
nRBC, % (%)
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
Platelet count (150 – 400 K/uL)
165
125
146
104
95
85
85
65
54
36
22
15
7
17
20
34
90
110
RBC (4.40 – 5.90 MIL/uL)
3.59
3.85
3.53
3.31
3.11
3.17
3.10
3.18
3.04
2.94
2.71
2.54
2.50
2.23
2.38
2.39
2.70
2.99
RDW (11.5 – 14.5 %)
13.1
13.7
13.1
13.2
12.9
12.2
12.3
11.8
11.8
11.5
11.2
11.2
11.1
11.1
11.5
11.6
16.6
17.2
WBC (4.0 – 11.0 K/uL)
5.6
45.4
5.1
4.2
4.0
3.6
2.9
1.4
0.3
0.1
<0.1
0.1
0.1
0.3
2.0
2.6
3.3
4.1
NAME (STANDARD RANGE)
3/20/23
3/31/23
4/10/23
4/13/23
4/14/23
4/15/23
4/16/23
4/17/23
4/18/23
4/19/23
4/20/23
4/21/23
4/22/23
4/23/23
4/24/23
4/26/23
5/2/23
5/11/23
Albumin, Ser/Plas (3.5 – 5.2 g/dL)
4.7
4.7
4.2
4.0
4.3
4.2
4.4
4.3
4.2
3.9
4.2
4.0
3.9
3.9
4.0
4.4
4.5
Alk P’TASE, Total, Ser/Plas (40 – 130 U/L)
55
69
56
55
54
56
56
58
58
59
57
53
48
51
51
52
51
ALT (10 – 50 U/L)
20
17
11
13
15
15
13
15
14
10
11
10
10
12
12
16
30
Anion Gap (5 – 15 mmol/L)
10
9
11
11
12
11
12
10
11
11
10
11
11
9
7
9
9
AST (10 – 50 U/L)
15
15
9
13
14
11
12
15
11
12
11
14
12
12
11
16
21
Calcium (8.4 – 10.5 mg/dL)
9.4
8.9
8.6
8.3
8.9
8.8
8.8
8.8
8.9
8.7
8.6
8.4
8.3
8.7
8.3
8.9
9.3
Chloride, Ser/Plas (98 – 107 mmol/L)
106
109
105
106
106
104
106
104
102
104
101
103
105
106
107
107
105
CO2, Ser/Plas (22 – 29 mmol/L)
24
24
23
21
22
22
22
22
21
21
22
20
18
22
23
24
25
Creatinine (0.67 – 1.17 mg/dL)
0.70
0.68
0.68
0.57
0.60
0.60
0.60
0.64
0.65
0.67
0.65
0.62
0.66
0.55
0.59
0.62
0.74
EGFR (>60 mL/min/1.73 m2)
117
118
118
124
122
122
122
120
119
118
119
121
119
125
123
121
115
Fasting
No
Globulin (2.0 – 5.0 g/dL)
1.2
1.3
1.3
1.2
1.1
1.3
1.4
1.5
1.4
1.5
1.2
1.2
1.3
1.7
1.4
1.2
1.6
Glucose, SER/PLAS (Manual Entry) See EMR for details (70 – 140 mg/dL)
Hot off the press, my latest numbers. Not much new. Although, my ratio of Lambda and Kappa finally are at a normal ratio, which it’s been awhile since that happened. Things do look pretty good though, despite the weekly chemo hammerings.
I’m marching towards high dose chemo with stem cell rescue (SCT) at Stanford, with collection at the end of this month. High dose chemo and stem cells infused back around April 10th. I feel pretty grateful that I’ve been referred to them for this procedure.
My last zap of chemo is on March 11. My self-imposed training regiment begins after that. I want to be in high gear physically and mentally. My goal is to restore and revitalize my cells and organs as much as possible prior to collection.
I have a meeting with two Stanford nutritionists tomorrow, I hope I learn something. The last time I had a meeting with a nutritionist, I was teaching them things. “Oh wow! I didn’t know that”, they said. As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m pretty passionate about nutrition.
But, I would like to point out, because sometimes I feel like I’m on a box preaching about nutrition, with no one listening. I feel like most people, if not all, would say Stanford is pretty top notch, as far as health care. They are making a point about how important nutrition is while you go through this procedure.
I’ve known people who have gone through medical procedures, and they’ve said to me that they want to eat really healthy and well, so they recover quickly. I find it funny, how it doesn’t compute with them about eating good food all the time, and they go back to eating garbage food after they’ve healed.
I’ll get back up on my box and say it matters all the time….
My Labs are finally back. It took forever for my M Band to come back. I was starting to think they lost the vial of blood. Made it to M-Band detected; not quantifiable, which is cool. For non myeloma people, that means it’s still there but below what they can measure, which is good, still aiming for Zero though.
My blood seems a bit beat up, Myeloma and all. Light chains are almost low now. Protein is punched down. First time in a while my hemoglobin is down, I’m not too concerned though. I remember one time I had a cbc, the lab messed up my platelets and I had to go back in the afternoon for another blood draw. Having had two cbc in one day, I saw how much they can vary, even from the same day. The morning hematocrit and hemoglobin were normal and the afternoon was low. Things are just a snapshot from when the Vampires struck.
Here is the latest set, a little late. It’s the first full set since I changed drugs. Light chains, made it to normal levels (barely). M-band dropped by 60%, which was awesome to see. I’m curious how far it will go, if it will hit zero.
My protein levels got punched and I’m not sure what happened to my Gamma Globlins. They pretty much have never moved much at all and all of a sudden they are low. My M spike is in the Gamma region, so I’m thinking maybe it has something to do with that? I’ll have to ask the Dr.
My platelets haven’t been this high in over three and a half years, so that was also nice to see. I’d say the rest of the numbers are more or less the same as usual.
Here is my latest set of labs. The doctors decided numbers weren’t moving fast enough and took me off Dara sq and Pom and put me on the more toxic Carfilzomib and Cyclophosphamide (good ‘ol mustard gas).
I was a bit concerned about burning through Dara sq rather quickly, when it was potentially still working, although really slowly. I talked to the oncologist and he thinks it’s still viable in the future.
I read that Cyclophosphamide can be more effective with Vitamin A and Beta-carotene and less toxic with Reishi mushrooms. Carrot juice for the win!
Because I started on new drugs, they ran some labs weekly. It was quite amazing to see my lambda light chains shoot down in less than two weeks and are now in normal range! Looks like it also punches down my kappa light chains, which I didn’t need, but I’m still scrapping by. M-band didn’t run, I suppose that will be the best indicator for the myeloma.
CBC looks pretty darn good. Nutrition nutrition nutrition, that’s my motto.
Unfortunately, after each infusion (3 now), I’ve ended up sick for 3-4 days. First was a cold, second was a cold and fever (thankfully, I avoided the emergency room) and now a sinus cold with the third. Honestly, I can’t tell anymore if it’s a germ or a side effect. It seems like a germ each time, but it starts around infusion time. I’m finally on the mend again today and I get a week off from chemo, so that’s awesome.
Carrots Over Cancer 