Snow today. OT and PT continue with good results. Sabine is able to actually walk with the aid of a walker and no longer has to shuffle her feet. While she continues to sleep at Buddy's house she is able to transverse the stairs each day down to our dialysis room.
Brother Rainer is sill with us and helping out with chores and cooking. He used his carpentry skills to install special railings so his lovely sister can get up and down the basement stairs.
Thanks to everyone who has furnished some great meals for us.
Spring semester started yesterday at UW-Platteville and all went well with my new class, "Police Leadership in Changing Times."
Today we went down to the clinic through some heavy wet snow (thanks to our FWD truck which performed heroically!). Transferring Sabine to the truck worked out -- it's a big step up.
At our meeting with SABINE's oncologist, Dr Sheehan, he proposed we take a new tack on the cancer by moving from CHEMOTHERAPY to IMMUNOTHERAPY by using a new drug called DARATUMUBAB. He is doing this because the present approach is losing its effectiveness and not repressing the cancer as well as we all hoped. Thankfully, we continue to have treatment options as we start our ninth year since diagnosis.
It will be a weekly infusion of the immunotherapy drug (the first one is scheduled for an all-day infusion) plus a sub-cutaneous injection of VELLCADE that same day plus a second shot of VELCADE clinic visit during the week. This regimen will also involve oral DEXAMETHASONE.
HOW DOES DARATUMUMAB (DARZALEX® ) WORK?
- DARZALEX® is not chemotherapy. DARZALEX® is a monoclonal antibody that works with your immune system. Monoclonal antibodies work by attaching themselves to multiple myeloma cells in your body and directly killing them, and/or signaling your immune system to destroy them
- DARZALEX® finds and attaches to a protein called CD38, which is present on the surface of cells, including high numbers on myeloma cells.
Okay. Here we go. New drugs. A healing pelvis