Short-lived Remission?

I finally reached Dr. Bishop the day after I published the last Blog. For maintenance chemo he recommended 2 doses of the Velcade 7 days apart, every 28 days, for 4 cycles (i.e February, March, April, and May). Seemed like a reasonably approach so I started on the 19th of February. As usual no side effects. But my monthly lab just prior to the first dose was disconcerting: the IgA had jumped from 209 to 463! This is just barely within the normal range, and about the same as in August (445) a month before the recurrence was evident in late September(690). It's pretty disappointing to think that this most recent remission might be so short lived, but Myeloma resistance to Velcade is not unusual. I feel fine, much better than in August, no inkling of the neurological symptoms that I associated with the last recurrence. It will be interesting to see what the blood test later this month shows and my next Bone Marrow when I return to NIH in late April.

Meanwhile "life goes on". The remainder of my two week assignment in Portland went smoothly. The work load, as described last month, continued to be underwhelming. Got a lot of reading done, and connected with quite a few acquaintances: breakfast with fellow Comanche pilot Glenn, dinners with Brie and Kevin, and Kelly and Hal (Lewiston connections),and Bram's friend Scotty (who bought the Subaru in November), skiing with my nephew Isaac, and attending the North American Handmade Bicycle Show with Ric and Donna (state-of-the-art handcrafted bikes including some made of wood, or bamboo!).

On the way home to Sandpoint picked up Burne in Spokane for a fun weekend of x-country and downhill skiing, MC's fine cooking and a great concert by Pearl Django. On the 22nd Mary Catherine and I had our belated Valentine's Day celebration - drove down to Spokane with another couple for dinner and a 2 hour show by Comedienne Paula Poundstone (NPR's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me"). Love her wry, New England brand of humor. She may have been even better than when we saw her in Seattle 2 years ago.

We had clear skies for the lunar eclipse - eerily beautiful. The good weather also allowed me to pick up the Comanche in Spokane. Its new Autopilot coupled to the upgraded GPS can fly a whole complex instrument approach. It's an amazing work saver and helpful back-up for those long solo instrument flights. Makes it even more important that I maintain my instrument proficiency - got in a good practice session with George last week.

Our record snow has been steadily melting/evaporating. However, up at Schweitzer there's been an additional 3-4" each week. I've skied at least 7 days since coming home, and I have frankly lost track of my total for this season; far more days than I've skied any year in my whole life, and the best conditions I've ever seen. In fact, it's been snowing all day today. I expect to be in 8+" of fresh powder tomorrow morning!

The '99 iMac I use primarily for our Quicken home accounts made a "zzzitt" noise and went completely dead the other night. We're hoping to salvage the data from the hard drive, or my back-up disk, and I've resigned myself to joining the laptop toting ranks - I ordered a new MacBook. I suppose it will be useful on the road.

I leave next weekend for another week working in Tillamook, OR. Forecasts so far look good for being able to fly the Comanche this time. Looking forward to it.