Brian's journey with multiple myeloma

It has certainly been a long time since I have written in our blog.  I see that I last wrote of our visit to Hilton Head last fall.  Since then, we did return to Hilton Head for a month’s stay in February/March and really enjoyed it.  The weather was great, the beach was awesome being a dog-friendly beach and we walked miles every day with Timmie in tow (sometimes in his doggy-buggy when he did not like the heat and would just sit down refusing to move). 

In hindsight, it was like the calm before the storm so to speak.  Upon our return from Hilton Head Brian started to notice that he was slowly losing weight and not feeling “right” and experienced some tiredness and fatigue.  We thought he may be getting a recurrence of his lymphoma so we contacted our oncologist who proceeded to give Brian a battery of tests and investigations.  A CT scan showed a tumor on his 8th rib near his spine for which he then had a needle biopsy and a bone scan.  The result of the biopsy was a plasmacytoma; next step was a bone marrow biopsy which was done last week.  Yesterday we went for the results and it turns out that Brian now has multiple myeloma which is a different cancer than his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma although is still a blood/bone marrow cancer.  It is a very unusual presentation as it does not show up in the blood work, the only reason they know it is myeloma is because of the tissue diagnosis.  This is called non-secretory multiple myeloma.  So the appointment went on for almost an hour as our oncologist explained what that entails and the treatment going forward.  Thank God Breanne was with us to keep all this information straight.  It was information overload for Brian and I, probably worse for Brian as I understood what she was saying where for Brian, it was flying right over his head! 

So treatment started yesterday preparing his body for the chemotherapy.  He was started on dexamethasone (steroid) high dose, four days on, four days off for the next three weeks along with an antibiotic he takes three times a week.  I don’t even know how he swallows the antibiotics – it looks like a horse pill to me!  The ultimate treatment after this would be a stem cell transplant but Brian is just one year over the cut-off age of when they offer this kind of therapy for fit individuals.  Our oncologist has written to the transplant coordinator in Hamilton to hopefully get an exception in his case as he is so fit and healthy otherwise.  He has no chronic illnesses that would interfere with treatment and as you all know, Brian is very fit – running and biking – in fact last week he was out a couple of times on his bike – he truly is amazing!  So we have to wait and see if they will accept him for a stem cell transplant but if he is rejected, he will then have CyBorD chemotherapy over the next three months. 

So that is it in a nutshell so to speak.  We are praying he is accepted into the stem cell transplant program.   Although the therapy will be hard and he will be in hospital for a few weeks with no immune system while they administer strong chemotherapy drugs, it does have the best outcome and at the end of it, he will have a brand new immune system.  We also are very grateful that we may have caught this early and he is in early stages of myeloma and will respond to whatever therapy he gets and we can get him back into remission for a while.  He did it once with lymphoma (still in remission), he can do it again.  Brian has a great positive attitude and he has one goal in mind – he will beat this for a long remission again.  I will blog about his journey for those of you interested to know how he is doing and Brian is okay with that.  It also helps us keep track of dates and therapies which we may have to refer to later. 


We appreciate all the prayers and positive thoughts we get from our army of family and friends! It goes a long way in the treatment process as well!