A Little Bit of Good News!

Click above to open a larger version

The labs from Monday, 8 June 2009, or fourteen days after starting bendamustine infusions, contain a small but I think believable indication that I'm responding to it.

I've been waiting in a dark and dismal place with little rational hope for good news, anything that might postpone the End Game. Today I have it.

The deep red line on my chart above is a rough measurement of the number of cancerous cells in my bone marrow (i.e., the "tumor burden"). You can see that it has been exploding upwards since the first of May. Mathematicians call this an "exponential curve," because each new value is a more-or-less constant multiplier ( > 1 ) of the previous value. A number can get dangerously high very quickly on such a curve. The most dangerous tend to look like straight, vertical lines on a standard chart.

Bendamustine, which I am apparently pioneering for multiple myeloma around these parts, was begun on 26 May 2009. If it works, it will slow down that soaring red measurement, bending it to the right, and, hopefully soon, send it plunging downward.

What it did this time was level it off. Last week the number was 131—this week it is 132, slightly higher but, basically, the same number. Progression has been stopped.

If you were to ask me why I believe the number, I have an explanation. Sometimes, one must consider that a single data point can be an erroneous result. I especially think so when I see something like on the right, where the second value appears to have fallen off the curve. The following week, the value is back on the curve. Apparent anomalies like the low point on the right cause me to say to myself, I need to see another measurement.

But when the new point shows an increase, however negligible, in the tumor burdon, I see it as consistent and plausible with the past. A change in the direction of the curve always needs confirmation. I therefore see no anomaly in the math: I believe it. The curve has flattened. I am responding to the Bendamustine.

Of course, the past does not restrict the future; the curve could take off upwards again soon, and besides, what we need now is to see a DROP. But today I can say, without fear of self-delusion, that a future drop is likely.

Which is the little bit of good news I have so desperately been needing. Being rational about ones chances is not the same as being indifferent to the outcome :)