You would think that Myeloma would be enough - I guess not.

I'm on day 11 or 12 of this round of Pomalyst for the Myeloma, everthing there seems to be going pretty well, should be doing blood tests and get looked at in the next couple of weeks, but it may have to wait a little while.

Patty isn't doing too bad, she did some things last week that really took it out of her and she's having a hard time getting her strength back.  She is quite weak and is sleeping and resting more than she was 2-3 weeks ago.  She is  better the last day or two than she was before that and are hopeful she'll continue to get better and stronger.

Now to my new "other" issues.  I mentioned in my last blog that the Squamous Cell Carsinoma on my head was coming back.  That was probably a little bit of an understatement.  Anyway, I had the PET scan and CT scan, they use the same machine, just set up slightly different with different operators to look for things.  The PET scan was full body and it works with some radioactive sugars to locate "hot" spots in the body that equate to cancer, the CT scan was limited to my head and neck to see if the Squamous had started to migrate anywhere else.  Unfortunately the results show that it has started to migrate into my neck, so after talking with a group of Oncologists in St. George, Dr. Te told me the group's recommendation was to use radiation on me to start with.  I asked them to find me a Radiation Oncologist down her in Vegas because of the logistics involved in doing radiation.  Although they only last for 5-20 minutes each, the treatments are every day of the week, so going to St. George is really not an option with taking care of Patty and travel and taking care of me during the treatments.  So, they referred me to Dr. Gregory Dean and the Radiation Oncology Centers of Nevada.  I met Dr. Dean this morning and went over how he is planning on treating me.  He had all the written reports on my condition, but since the PET and CT scans had been sent by mail, he did not have them yet, hopefully they will come today or at the latest tomorrow.  He talked with me about his thoughts of how he would try to direct the radiation at the back side of my skull and down the back of my neck to take care of the big nasty looking thing on my head.  He said that they would start out with 3-4 weeks of treatment on my head and neck and then take another PET and CT to see how things are progressing and see where phase 2 of the treatments need to concentrate.  I felt pretty good talking with him, He spent a while with me going over his approach to the treatments, hopefully after getting a look at the scans, he will confirm his thinking.  He wants to start my treatments next Monday, and I already have an appointment scheduled for tomorrow (Friday) to have a scan done in his offices to confirm his treatment approach.  Then on Monday they will call me and tell me what time of day to come to begin the treatment.  I understand I will not feel well, how bad, I don't know yet.  Dr. Dean was kind enough to let me know that most likely, I will permenantly lose the hair off the top and back of my head, so I'll either get very creative with the comb-overs or take up shaving on the areas that will still grow some hair.  I'm sure others in my family will know more about this process that I do.  I will wait to see what they do to me and what it does to me, I'd rather not have too much information, it will just make me worry and fret too much.

I have not said much at all to mom about this latest news.  She has had plenty to think about with dad going up to the rest home, but I guess I'd better give her some if not most of this information, otherwise someone is bound to say something around her and she would probably be a little upset with me.

Well, that's enough for now, I'll write more later after I'm into the treatment.