The first step of treatment is a Chemo treatment called the VRD Regimen. Until I started this, I was clueless as to what Chemo was in the sense I thought Chemo = radiation! In a nutshell its:
VRD Regimen (every 21-day cycle) consisting of,
VELCADE (under the skin injection) Once a week injection
REVLIMID (oral pill) Once daily for 14 days and then 1 week off.
DEXAMETHASONE (oral steroid) Once a week with Velcade injection
The goal of this treatment is to get cancerous cells out of your body or to as low as possible. Typically this treatment lasts 6/7 cycles, roughly about 5 months or so. The aggressiveness of this treatment varies from doctor to doctor and from patient to patient. I lucked out (that is going to be a whole story by itself) in how my Doc approached it.
My doc — Dr. Faisal Cheema from Kaiser at Santa Clara is an incredible doctor. Early on in the process, one of my friends from the pharmaceutical side of cancer told me that Hematological Oncologists are considered the cowboys of cancer -very aggressive in their treatment approach, singularly focussed on getting rid of the bad cells, and objectively driven. That’s Dr. Cheema. In addition, from Day 1 he made himself available and answered every single question patiently — I remember the first meeting he noticed Manju (my wife) having a notebook and when she explained she has a page full of questions, he stopped what he was saying and went through each of those questions. I lucked to having him as my doc.
For you to take Revlimid, you pretty much have to sign off saying that you will not procreate while taking this tablet. I will leave it as an exercise for folks to google this one out. The Velcade injection is a doozy. It's supremely acidic — the first time the nurse donned two bibs, followed by 2 gloves I asked what gives, her answer was that you cannot have that injection touch your skins. That's the shit that goes into your body. It burns through your body rapidly, lasts about 5 mins. Over time you kinda get used to it, but the pain brings tears to your eyes. I used to hold my wife's fingers and the squeeze made her wince, but she never said as much. Payback for the all-time I let her dig her nails into my arms while watching Jurassic Park!
Within 2 cycles of the treatment, my Dr. informed me that I am reacting very very well to the therapy/treatment. The measure for this was the decrease in cancerous cells — indicated by blood, plasma, and platelets coming back as well specific protein serum tests showing improvement.
By the end of the 3rd cycle, my Doc told me that he is going to start the process for getting me into the Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT at Stanford as he was extremely encouraged by the progress. In the Bay area, BMT at Stanford is the only place to get this done. And the fact that I live close by turned out be another blessing (again I lucked out).
