UCLA

Today was my first opportunity to get on the computer to update everyone on our visit to UCLA. These past two week have been really rough and things got tougher for me over the past 4 days. Sunday I received some bad news concerning a close family member and then on Monday I was rear ended by a very nice lady. The car wasn't damaged to bad but I sustained a neck injury commonly known as "whiplash".

I wanted our visit to UCLA to be as informative as possible. Here was our opportunity to ask the "expert" any question we could think of. But with the muscle relaxer I've been taking my brain was in a fog and all I wanted to do was sleep.

I'll keep it short. The doctor at UCLA wants Steve to be part of a clinical trial. The clinical trial is being conducted all over the United States and he will be the third patient that UCLA will have in the trial. Apparently Steve's options are a little more limited then most. He's already had 3 other kinds of treatment and too many different treatments can preclude you from a clinical trial.

Another preclusion factor is if the patient has had any other cancer in the past 3 years. He has, but as long as the cancer was confined AND the Insurance Company authorizes the treatment then Steve can participate. If this doesn't work there are other treatment options available. The good news is that if his cancer goes into remission he can still have a SCT.

We'll find out more on Monday. But in the mean time we are going away this weekend to visit Steve's son, Dane. We are not going to think about myeloma, doctors, blood tests, treatments or anything else to do with cancer. We are going to have a great time in Reno, eat what ever we want, go where ever we want and sleep in as late as we want! Who knows maybe there will be a nice jacuzzi at the hotel and we'll soak for a while!

Love,
Deanna