Mostly Good News

Over the Christmas holidays, Deb began to have pain in her hip and pelvis bone around the hip such that it hurt with every step, so we called to move up her tests and appointment by a week to the 5th and asked for an x-ray of that hip and pelvis. We were fighting for faith and trying not to be too concerned and jump to conclusions again. But by the time of the x-ray on the 5th of January, it had stopped hurting. Otherwise she felt fine.

She went in to see her oncologist on the 12th and received mostly good news. The x-ray showed no reason for her pain and no difference from the last time it was x-rayed. Wonderful! Her red and white cells were in normal ranges along with platelets. Good! Tthe refined test for MM showed her to be in the normal range - meaning no measurable activity. Fantastic! But that pesky M protein marker that had been increasing a tenth of a point per month had jumped .3 of a point to 0.9. No one can figure out why it is doing this. So that is a concern and something to watch. The oncologist is baffled by it and is going to consult others for ideas. He is being patient with us and is not recommending his treatment yet. So, our take is that any time you go to the oncolgist ,and he says all of the most important tests show normalcy, and he does not recommend his treatments, then that is good news! We will go back the end of February for tests and see him March 2 for another checkup. Hopefully that M protein will begin to decrease by then.

It was a very good visit. We had never seen such humility from him as he answered our probing questions with "we don't know" over and over and tried to explain the very limited knowledge medical science has of the human body and its operation. For the first time he also mentioned two retired medical doctors who have MM. One is eleven years out with only two relapses. the other is three years out and was treated with the stem cell transplant approach. He thinks Deb's MM is a slow acting type. Hopefully he is right.

Our Sovereign God is good all the time. We continue to enjoy good health and are grateful for it and of course desire more of it.