I confess this post is two-fold: to give you information and to jog my memory. Most of the following information was obtained from http://www.multiplemyeloma.org/: a great website and a great foundation.
Multiple Myeloma (MM) is a cancer of the plasma cells in the blood. The plasma cells are the part are the blood that produce antibodies. It was explained to us: when you get a vaccine as a child the body learns to fight off the weakened disease by producing antibodies which then float around in your blood-and are continually being reformed- waiting to attack the virus if it comes back. There are lots of different types of antibodies/plasma cells in the blood: Polio, Mumps, Measles, etc. In MM, some how the cells are genetically damaged and start producing malignant plasma cells or myeloma cells. They do not function properly and start increasing so rapidly that there is too much of this one, useless antibody in the body. They start 'crowding out' the normal, functional antibodies and prevent production of more normal, functional antibodies, so the immune system can't fight off the 'invasion.'
As the these tumors grow they invade the outer hard part of the bone and make holes or "lesions". They are normally found in the larger bones of the body: Vertebrae, Skull, Femur, and Ribs. My mom had two large lesions in her femur, several in her ribs and a large lesion in her lower vertebra. All the myeloma cells are the same and are called paraproteins. Which is what they are measuring during the blood test my mom gets on a regular basis. This is new knowledge for my precious brain. An important part of MM is being an involved patient. We are always being told to know your blood work. Well, we really wanted to be active and involved but we could never figure out what the heck the tests were called. Dr. Hollister and Dr. Cooper ran different tests so we could never get straight answers it seemed. But now we know we want the paraprotein measurement (and when we ask for that we are asking for the number of myeloma cells in her blood). I feel a little smarter right now-WHOO HOO.
Here's an example of an x-ray of someone who has MM lesions. My mom's x-ray looked similar to the right bone, only with two big 'bites' taken out.
I got this picture from www.multiplemyeloma.org and I hope it was okay to copy to this blog.
They still do not have a cause for this type of cancer. It happens more in the elderly (except my mom's case...she's still a spring chick:) ) so they think it might be related to the aging process or a build up of toxins in the body. We can't say for sure why my mom got this cancer because she doesn't fit the usually bill: male, African American, over 70, industrial worker or atom bomb survivor.
There really aren't any symptoms for early stages of MM, so usually it isn't diagnosed until later stages. Symptoms for later stages include kidney problems, pain (my mom), fatigue, recurring infections, and nervous system dysfunction (which I haven't heard of before).
Lots of tests are done for diagnosis, classification and staging (determining how bad). I won't go into the whole list because chances are you don't really care, unless you think you might have it. Basically, there are several different blood tests, urine samples, x-rays, MRI and a bone marrow biopsy. There are 3 stages and my mom's initial diagnosis was stage 3, meaning she had it pretty bad. This is reminding me to ask Dr. Hollister exactly what type she has and her current classification and stage and all that, hopefully my mom remembers. I gotta start making a list.
I hope this helped answer some questions about my mom's cancer. If you have anymore, feel free to email me and I'll hunt down some answers.
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