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.
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.
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1 comments:
Ugh, Tampa. I hate tampa. I hope he finds it more fulfilling than I have.
These days drugs are so hard to guess at. Soon I plan on trusting in drugs a lot. I think there are magnificent and almost endless potential benefits to medicine in the near future, especially as they become more targeted, and their delivery to specific spots in the body results in less side-effects.
This sounds like it could be a very helpful drug. One of these days drugs like this will work some miracle; I hope this is the day for your father. Good luck.
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