Maintenance Chemo?

I spent the first two weeks of January working at a Locums assignment in Portland Oregon. Nice Hospital (Good Samaritan), but screwy situation. I get paid to sit around all day for any possible additional cases that the regular anesthesia group can't cover. Somedays I'd do nothing all morning, then start a case at 2PM and end up with 3-4 hours of overtime! Good money, but I'd rather be busy. Got a lot of reading done at least. I had previously committed to the first two weeks of February as well, so I'm back there now (writing this blog at 9AM in the Anesthesia office). I brought plenty of books and journals this time, plus my guitar and skis (planning to ski Mt Hood with my nephew Isaac this Sunday).
The Wednesday after I returned to Sandpoint Mary Catherine and I made another 6 day trip back East. I received the planned donor lymphocyte infusion (DLI) at NIH and made a side trip to Boston. MC helped our friend Chinky adjust to being home following ankle replacement surgery. My Mom had just been discharged from the rehab facility following her hip pinning and was making remarkable progress. En route back to the Providence Airport I visited George - but unfortunately there wasn't time for "chanx".
We're having an epic winter in Sandpoint. I literally spent the next two weeks shoveling snow and/or skiing fresh powder almost every day (the left knee I "tweaked" in late December is thankfully doing much better). The landing gear on the Comanche was finally fixed so I was able to get in some instrument practice between snow storms and get it down to Spokane for the autopilot installation scheduled for while I'm here in Portland.
When I saw Dr. Bishop at NIH he brought up the option of going on maintenace chemotherapy for the myeloma. Theoretically, by keeping me on Velcade (the drug he's used to get me back in remission twice now) I might stay in remission longer. Unfortunately there is not enough clinical experience yet to know if this works at all let alone what the optimal dosage/timing is. Will more exposure to Velcade foster resistance? No one knows. At first Dr Bishop said it would be just one dose a month, but then he started mentioning other regimens involving multiple doses...Since then we've been playing "phone tag" getting each other's voice mail, so he hasn't been able to lay out for me all the options, pros and cons. Meanwhile I go back and forth on this. I don't want to take more chemo if it isn't going to help, but if I don't take it there's the hypothetical situation of having another recurrence and wondering if maintenance chemo would've made a difference?
On my way to Portland I braved the mountain passes of the Cascades (the severity of the conditions, as usual, vastly exagerated by the both the media and state highway websites!) to visit Sarah before she returns to Paraguay for the last 6 months of her Fulbright work. We had a lot of good one-on-one time as well as connecting with
3 of MC's siblings and her parents for lunch Saturday, and breakfast with my college roommate Ric and his family on Sunday.
From Sarah's current reading she and I took a "Personal Genuine Wealth Survey": 39 questions regarding your values, finances, and lifestyle. I was surprised at how high I scored, and then intrigued that I could be "wealthier" than I thought. It's funny, but until I took this inventory I hadn't realized that the Myeloma is really the only significant negative factor in my life at this time, and even with that I'm doing far better than most people with this diagnosis. It's all about perspective.