84. Tampa

Date: May 20, 1991
Age: 13

I have to give a speech here today but I'll be home for your birthday.
Have a good one.
Love you,
Dad

My dad was released from the hospital a couple of weeks ago, and has recently been accepted into a clinical trial at a cancer center in Tampa. He'll get infusions every Monday and Tuesday, blood tests Wednesday morning, then heads home--this is supposed to happen three weeks on, one week off, for a year (if it works).

It's good to hear that he, or more importantly, his doctors, are projecting treatment into the year to come. I've never had any real sense about his prognosis, and the frail health plus dramatics my brothers and I faced in Miami this spring made us think there wasn't a lot of time left for him.

The drug he's trying now is called Carfilzomib, which I guess is still so in the early stages that it doesn't pop up on Wikipedia or WebMD yet--meaning, it hasn't yet been written about in dumbed-down terms that I can understand. From what I can make of the info I have found, however, is that it's shown promise in fighting multiple myeloma even if the patient has already relapsed after therapies such as stem-cell transplants (like my dad).

The drive to Tampa is a trek-about 4 and a half hours. Yes, doable, but I'm sure will be exhausting for someone at his age in his condition to be doing every week.