Sunday 4 September 2016

Wildly unsurprising

Big boss, big time, business. Make me your mark and I’ll take you one by one *
Big Boss Big Time Business - Santigold

Checkup ... KFLC 341 ...

Are you bored of hearing about my slowlapse? The heavens know I am. Here's another instalment. All so very portentous, and yet not much new in the news. My light chains are up again. The absolute figure is somewhat alarming, being more than half way back to where I was before my transplant. But the trend is continuous and gradual - increasing about +50 per month now. It was +10 per month 2 years ago; +30 per month one year ago. I ask DrC whether I should be expecting the linear trend to continue until I find myself complaining of symptoms, or if we're waiting for some exponential acceleration. His answer is that cancer is abnormal by nature,
"Like a wild man".
Its progression cannot be predicted.

My own hunch, though, is that the onset will be gradual. And I'd rather have slow myeloma than fast myeloma, even though it may mean I have to return to properly symptomatic illness - bone pain and all - as the cue to treatment. What fun! As for when I can expect this joy? DrC says, again, that he reckons I probably won't need treatment for at least 6 months. But at the outside, at the current rate, it will only be another year until my light chains are >1,000 and I'm fairly confident I'll be symptomatic by then. So back on chemo somewhere between March and Sept 2017, and another SCT somewhere towards the end of 2017 or early 2018. Somehow I have dodged the bullet in 2016. There's no realistic prospect of doing so much longer.

None of this is really news. And right now, I feel fine. Whatever.

Nor does the report from my most recent spine MRI shed much light. My back is wrecked, but it's not about to collapse. My thoracic and lumbar regions are a mess of vertebra compressions and fractures, and there's visible infiltration in my bone marrow, but there's no evidence of imminent likelihood of cord compression. I'll have to hope that the neuropathy in my thigh eventually resolves.

I've been in this waiting loop for a year now. It doesn't half disrupt plan making. Decisions about work, travel, even whether or when to get a puppy, are all stuck somewhere between provisional and impossible. I really don't know. Cannot know. Right now, with the kids going back to school this week, I'm going to invest a bit of time in home making, to which I'm quite looking forward. Next week Lyndon starts school: a day I once feared I would not see. For that I'm grateful. So much so that I can avoid dwelling on the rest.

* The lyric is fatuous. But Santigold puts on a great live show.
Being able to stand up in a gig is another thing I'm grateful for