From everything we'd read, and all the people we had talked to that had undergone stem cell transplant, we'd anticipated the experience with considerable dread, but it turned out to be not as bad as we had feared. Not to downplay it, because Jimmy was very sick for several days, he has withstood it very well.
We won't know where we are with the myeloma for months, until the bone marrow grows back enough that it can be tested for the presence of cancer cells. An interesting thing: it was Sunday morning, Day Two of transplant, and out of the blue, Jimmy turned to me, and looked me straight in the eye, and said, "The cancer's gone." "Well, I hope so," I answered, indulging him. "No. No, I mean it's GONE. It's a physical thing. I feel different. It's gone."
Jimmy felt so badly during December, and we just assumed that it was taking him a long time to recover from the chemotherapy, but in retrospect, we now think it was the disease itself working on him. Even after those three chemo bombs he had three weeks ago, he feels better today than he did before he got them.
Multiple myeloma is incurable. So far. And we are not deluding ourselves that we killed every last one of the cancer cells forever, since even one survivor can mutate and multiply, but we do think they have been seriously decimated, at least until Dr. Lonial figures out how to wipe them out for good. And who knows? Maybe Jimmy will be the first; it has to be somebody, so why not him?
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