What some of you may not know - especially from this self centred blog is that Elspeth my wife had breast cancer just before I was diagnosed. She was successfully treated also at the WGH and has just come off the 5 years of tamoxifen follow up after her surgery and chemotherapy. As part of the trial protocol she is in she now moves to Letrosol as a followup to the tamoxifen- and this lasts for another 3 years. So though the blog gives a statement of where I am, it doesn't fully let you know just what is happening in the house generally. But as I'm the biggest beneficiary of Elspeth's care and love, then its important for me to let you know now and again just where she is.
Yesterday took the prednisolone, melphalan and Thalidomide for day 1 of cycle 2. Prednisolone has the same effect as the Dexamethasone in that my blood sugars immediately went away up ( 19.6) and I had to start taking insulin again. I also took the thalidomide at double the dose of cycle 1. Effect of the thalidomide which I take at night because of the sedative effect is that it probably helped me sleep and I got through to 5.30 before waking up- by my standards on steroids that's not bad.
Day 2- - can't be sure but I don't feel as tired as I did in cycle 1 so I'm hoping that this cycle might be a bit easier- this is where the infection risk ( my white counts are pretty low) becomes a key factor. In any case, the main aim is not necessarily to have a good cycle but to bring down the paraprotein to whatever plateau it reaches. I know we'll never get it down to an unmeasurable point- I'm too realistic for that- but hope the plateau might be below the 14 we reached after just cycle 1.
Also have to recognise that my puggle point is quite low just now- i.e. the point at which I feel puggled or tired. Did a number of jobs today and reached my puggle point a bit earlier than I wanted to. So need to keep an eye on how much I do and need to pace myself a bit more than usual.
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