New Frontiers in Medicine

So here's the deal. Blaine is severely cytopenic, meaning that his counts are very down, but not pan-cytopenic, meaning that all cell lines are down. His whites are recovering, though clearly not ideal. He is getting platelets and red blood cells today.

We met with Dr. Trico this morning. Blaine's Pet scan shows numerous new lesions, meaning progressive disease. They are not large, but they are present and growing. We knew the disease was progressing by the lesions that we could see on the outside. None of the lesions on the inside of his body are extramedullary, or outside the bone, which is good. Since his counts have not recovered, they cannot do any further chemo until it does. Chemo controls active disease, which he has, as well as affecting bone marrow. Thus the low counts. His platelet count needs to hit 100 before they can treat him again. They were 16 this morning, so pray for Blaine's blood counts to recover so they can treat the active myeloma! He responds to the chemo, but it always 'reseeds' as Dr. Tricot says.

The million dollar question is ... how to keep it from reseeding? Well the dedicated Dr. Tricot has a possible solution. There is a regimen of three common, non-chemo drugs that do NOT affect marrow function and therefore will not drop Blaine's blood counts, that in combination have been shown effective killing cancer stem cells in lab animals and test tubes. Just as healthy plasma cells develop from healthy stem cells, myeloma cells differentiate from defective stem cells. This regimen has not been tested on humans. Blaine will be the very first. Dani says, "He will boldly go where no human has gone before. Sweet!" They will also give carefully dosed and monitored amounts of chemo to control active disease, tapering it off as the stem cells deteriorate. He said this should take 6 weeks to 3 months. But since this has not been done on humans before, we will not know for sure until it gets underway.

To be very clear, this is Dr. Tricot's last line of defense. He says after this, he has nothing else. Blaine's counts are too fragile to try any trial chemo, and he would not qualify for most trials because he is post-transplant. So we are praying for that miracle. If this shows promise, then it has the potential to help many people. This is what Dr. Tricot has been working on. Half of his job is taking care of patients and the other half is looking for a cure. As stated, Blaine will be the first to try this approach.

We leave Monday for the east coast, but I am very unsure if we will be able to do any visiting. We will however, have to go to Dartmouth a time or two, so maybe we can see a few of you there, but this may be at very odd hours ... we hope Gaylin will be working during at least one of those visits. The kids would REALLY love to come as well, but alas, not this round.

That's the news today. Blaine is asleep while he gets his infusion, and I am here typing. It is a beautiful spring day, and we continue to count our blessings. While there are certainly trials, there is also hope. Hope springs eternal. We know in whom we have placed our trust, and we will continue to do so. Take care.