I haven’t been inspired to write much as of late, as you can tell by my lack of posts. I was just more interested in doing other things.
Not much is new. Still doing maintenance carfilzomib chemo every two weeks. I still get high fevers from it every time. I’m into the 103 degrees now, so it’s been a challenge. I’m signed up for the flu every two weeks. Blah.
I went out to San Francisco a few weeks ago to visit my brother. We went for a hike at Land’s End, which I had never been to before. It was a cloudy day, but it was still scenic. It was pretty crowded, since a lot of people were off from work because of the holidays.
We hiked down to the ocean, and I found a big rock to climb up onto that part of it was in the water. I sat down to watch the ocean. California was having a storm coming in, which made the waves quite large. It was very satisfying watching the waves come in, break cleanly, and then smash into the rocks.
I’m always amazed by the power of the ocean. I’m also equally amazed, how rows of rocks in the ocean can dissipate that power. Waves that seem to be coming to run you over and churn you into dust, just dissipate into nothing. It’s fun to watch.
I had a bone marrow biopsy the other day. I agreed to it 6 months ago. The myeloma specialist wanted to check on things, more specifically, he wanted to check my MRD status. Last time, I had 3 myeloma cells in 2.6 million.
Coming up to the biopsy, I was wondering why I choose to have it done. If it’s MRD zero (zero cells in a million), which would be awesome or if it showed 100 myeloma cells in a million, I’m not sure what would change much currently.
I suppose I would get a mental boost if it was zero, but what if it was worse? Would I feel dragged down? What am I going to gain from this? I feel pretty level-headed about it all, no matter what the result is, but those were my thoughts leading up to it. Anyhow, I just decided to go ahead and do it, because the specialist thought it was important. He probably knows more about myeloma than I do 😜. Maybe he will share with me his thoughts sometime. My regular oncologist was against it (mostly because of the cost for the hospital), but I twisted his arm (go figure, twisting an arm to have my marrow sucked out).
They take the bone and the marrow out of the iliac crest. I had them take it from my left side, because that’s where I had it done last time, and MRD can vary from location to location.
So I hopped up on the procedure table, face down. The nurse then came up and pulled down my pants to expose my butt. Then she tucked in some disposable cloths to my pants to contain the blood.
I’m lying there with my buns just hanging out. Minute after minute pass, and the nurse finally says, I’m going to find out where the guy is who is going to do the procedure. She flies the door open to the busy hallway and disappears.
“Don’t mind me, I’m just airing out my buns”.
She comes back after a few minutes and says he is at the hospital next door and will be here shortly.
Five minutes later, he comes in and says hello, and says he brought a friend to come and watch (he really said, can I have my student in here to observe?).
In my head I say, “sure, I’m lying here exposed, let’s get a bunch of people in here”.
Now, it’s a good thing I don’t actually care. I gave up caring about people seeing my butt awhile ago.
They numb me up as much as possible and start getting to work with the core needle, a needle so strong and sharp it cuts bone. Eventually they get through the bone and have access to my marrow.
There is no numbing of the marrow, so it’s the most painful part of the procedure. The nurse came over and gave me a back rub while they pulled it out this time. Which didn’t make any difference, but it was a nice gesture.
Afterwards, I was chuckling to myself. I was laying on a small table with my butt exhibited, with three people surrounding me, like I was on a stage doing a performance. The things people do for entertainment these days….
Anyhow, that’s my (hopefully entertaining) story, we will see what the marrow numbers are in a few weeks.
Carrots Over Cancer 