Our story so far

Just to catch you up with what I'm doing now: The drug I'm being treated with now is Carfilzomib, a new protease inhibitor that is in clinical trials. Previously, I've been through thalidomide, velcade, revlimid, VAD (vinchristine, adriamycin, dexamethasone), DT-PACE (Dexamethasone, Thalidomide, Platinol, Adriamycin, Cytoxan and Etoposide), then a bone marrow transplant with Melphalan. After that I was in complete remission for a few months before relapsing. After the relapse, I went through Hyper-CVAD (Same C,V,A, and D as before - I forget what the hyper part was) and anothee DT-PACE. I handled most of them pretty well except the ones with Vinchristine in them, That didn't go well.
The doctors are pretty confident in that they've had very good success with other people in the trial, all of whom have histories much like mine. The only difference is that I'm the first person at UCSF to go into this who has some renal insufficiency (kidney damage) so the procedures are a bit different for me.

I've felt pretty good the past few days. I got some whole blood on Monday. I think I need to be a bit more aggresssive in treating anemia. New year's eve was a wild party night here - I was up until well past nine o'clock.