Paraprotein

I’m sitting here, hooked up to my second dose of Zometa (the bone strengthening drug which I will take every four weeks for the next two years) thinking ‘it’s been six days since my last post’. Why…well, in truth, I really haven’t felt like writing anything over the last few days. Funny really, because the results I got last Thursday were a real cause for celebration. The blood tests taken just before the start of my second cycle of chemo showed that my paraprotein level had dropped from 21 g/l to 17 g/l. This is another strong indication that the treatment is working!!

A few people have asked about paraprotein levels (for the Swedes amongst you, that’s ‘M-komponenten’), so here’s a simple explanation from the Myeloma UK website. Myeloma is a type of cancer arising from plasma cells which are found in the bone marrow. These plasma cells form part of your immune system. Normal plasma cells produce antibodies that help fight infection. In myeloma, malignant plasma cells in the bone marrow produce large amounts of an abnormal antibody known as paraprotein. Unlike normal antibodies, paraprotein lacks the capacity to fight infection and has no useful function (apart from giving you the looks of Quasimodo!!). It is often through the measurement of this paraprotein that myeloma is diagnosed and monitored.

From what I currently understand, the ideal is for this count to reduce to zero, at which point you’d to be considered to be in complete remission. Again, myeloma is such an individual disease, so there’s nothing exact about these values, and as far as I know you can have a paraprotein count of 2 to 3, and still be considered in remission. That’s something I will understand more about in the future, but for the time being, I’m responding to the treatment and things are heading in the right direction. I’m counting my blessings.

Anyway, back to why I haven’t been in the mood to post a blog for the last few days. I’ve had a real lack of energy, partly due to an on-going cold, and certainly not helped by my broken sleep. It’s turned into a bit of a running battle for me. My brain on the one side, trying to convince me that I’m OK to carry on with my normal routines, and my body on the other, telling me to stop and listen. I’m frustrated by this standoff at the moment, but as everyone says, I need to listen to what my body is saying. I need to make that adjustment, to accept that this treatment will weaken me. It’s difficult, because I just want everything back to normal, back to the way it was. The feeling of numbness that I’ve previously experienced really took over, and in hindsight I probably wasted energy trying to fight it. No one said this was going to be easy, and hopefully this weekend has been a lesson for me……just listen to your body! Either that or stop complaining and just get out there a cut the bloody lawn!!

Len and I often talk about these kinds of issues. We learn a lot from each other (though mainly her off me obviously!!), but when it comes to these more ‘behavioural’ issues and techniques, Len takes the lead and is clearly the more informed member of our family. She re-emphasised that, if myeloma is what we’ve got to deal with, how grateful we should be that the tumour on my sternum exposed this disease so early. How fortunate I was to have the trauma in the summer of 2010 (sounds more convincing than ‘mishap on a water slide’…) that seemingly weakened the bone and allowed this otherwise hidden disease to surface. Most people are not so lucky, and many do not even discover they are sick until their kidneys are no longer functioning. As I’ve said before, considering I have multiple myeloma, and how it could have continued to attack my body and destroy my plasma cells for many more years, I’m in a good place.