Not a rash decision

Round six of my bendamustine and rituximab therapy has been delayed on account of a mysterious rash. 

A few months ago I noticed a half dozen or so raised spots that I assumed were bug bites and thought nothing more about it. It's possible that they were bug bites, or it's possible that they were the start of an allergic response to one or both of the drugs I've been taking.

During the past month, and especially in the past couple of weeks, a rash both similar and different has spread. Some are raised, some are flat, and the flat ones are both circular and asymmetrical. I've got these in at least two dozen places, including the head, arms, chest, and legs. There's no particular pattern; like spring flowers, they're busting out all over.

On Wednesday I saw my dermatologist, who took two biopsies (results pending) and suggested that the rash was either a reaction to the chemotherpy or lymphocytic infiltration of the skin.

The latter is a new one on me, but apparently it can happen. On Friday I saw my oncologist, Dr. Droll, who said he doubts it's that. One reason is that my CLL is in pretty good remission after five rounds of B & R; the other is that the pattern of my rash does not look like lymphocytic infiltration that he has seen.

Dr. Droll thinks this could be a reaction to one of the drugs, probably Rituxan, or else a general immune dysfunction. Last year, when I was on Revlimid, I began to develop rashes with greater frequency in response to things that previously had not bothered me, such as experiencing the pollens in a new location or sweating in the Arizona heat. It seemed that Revlimid had amped up my immune response; my instinct tells me that immune "over-response" to something -- possibly Rituxan -- is what's going on here.

Both Dr. Droll and I shared the instinct that going forward with my sixth and final round of chemo next week would be a, um, rash decision, possibly adding fuel to the fire.

We're going to wait for the biopsy results. He also suggested that I might want to do the dreaded four-day pulsed dexamethasone regimen again, as that could tamp down any overboard immune response that might be happening. I'm probably going to give it a try, as the rash spots are only getting more numerous. 

I'm treating them topically with triamcinolone (corticosteroid) cream. The dermatologist said this will relieve symptoms (some of the spots are itchy sometimes) although it may not make them go away. Which is another reason for trying the pulsed steroids, to try to shut the whole process down.

The long-term plan is to go ahead with round six of B & R when the rash is under control, and to consider doing it without the R.

Meanwhile, round five was fairly uneventful, but surrounded by uncertainty about a mysterious jump in my blood calcium levels. Hypercalcemia can be scary, as it is often associated with end-stage cancer or a new cancer; luckily, the story has a happy ending and an unlikely culprit. I'll write about it soon.

Holy bendamustine, Batman! (B-R round two)

I have finished the second of my six bendamustine-rituximab treatments, and this time the regimen came with some "Kapow" and a little "Bam."

To guard against tumor lysis, my first treatment involved only two-thirds of the standard dose of bendamustine (aka Treanda); this time I had the full 100mg/m2. My reaction was significantly more intense than the easy-breezy first time around.

The bendamustine was administered last Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday also included the Rituxan, which brought forth infusion reactions unlike any I have had before. The ill effects of the bendamustine -- fatigue and low-level nausea -- didn't set in until Thursday night, and have only really abated today.

More on that later. First, there is good news to report. The higher dose has done a much more noticeable job on the nodes, almost returning my neck to its natural swanlike appearance, and reducing a large mass in the abdomen to a reasonable degree. I still have a long way to go with the nodes, but if this keeps up, I will have made significant progress by the time I'm through.

One question is how long the nodes will stay at their current size. Last time around, they began to bounce back in the week before my second treatment. By the time I sat down in the infusion chair, most of the progress that had been made thanks to the first round had been erased.

This is not a good sign, and it indicates how fast my disease is prone to grow. But my reaction to round two, with a much more noticeable node reduction than round one, makes me cautiously optimistic that the effort will hold this time. Which, fingers crossed, means round three should see an overall further reduction in the nodes.

I am hopeful that the cumulative effect of the treatments will largely shut down the CLL factory in the marrow as well as reducing it in the nodes, creating a smaller, more easily manageable disease.

A FISH story

For some time I have wondered if my disease has turned more aggressive, or whether it has reached a critical mass, like a snowball rolling downhill, gathering size until it gets so big that it is difficult to stop.

A first step was to get a new FISH test, which I did in April. Would there be a 17p deletion there, indicating more aggressive disease?

The results were a little surprising. My first FISH test, back in 2004, showed a "normal" karyotype, which meant the chromosomal damage was of a nature not probed for on the test. In 2006, the FISH came back positive for the 11q deletion on 24% of cells examined, not good news. 2007's FISH showed 11q in 36% of cells. 2008's FISH showed 11q on 53% of cells. In 2009, 11q was noted on 31% of cells examined. (Why the dip? Who knows? But it didn't change the basic picture: an 11q deletion that appeared to have increased in the number of cells over time. By the way, the deletion always showed up on one arm of the chromosome only, which was of some comfort, as it meant I still had some ATM function, ostensibly.)

2010 and 2011, the Revlimid years, were FISH-free as the disease was under control for most of the time. Then in April of this year came an interesting twist: the 11q was down to 8% and a new deletion, 13q, again on one arm of the chromosome, was found on 30% of cells examined.

That FISH test was from the peripheral blood. In July, I had a bone marrow biopsy, which showed 90% involvement by CLL. A FISH was performed on that sample. It showed no 11q deletion at all, and a 13q deletion on 42% of cells.

So, what does all this mean? It appears my 11q clones are in decline, which is good news. (Why that is, again, who knows? It appears to fly in the face of conventional wisdom. My hunch, which is a completely wild guess, is that my Revlimid treatments had something to do with it.)

The April FISH showed a double deletion (11q and 13q), which is not good news. And while 13q is considered the most benign of the deletions, there are a couple of flavors of 13q. One indicates more aggressive disease; the tests I had did not go beyond the basic probe, indicating a deletion of one arm of 13q14.3.

I don't think the handoff from 11q to 13q indicates an improvement in my disease. But this is about the best change I can hope for; it would seem to indicate that the disease is probably not more aggressive by nature than it was before.

So I am basically subscribing to the snowball theory, and only time will tell if I am right. Another point I am compelled to make: FISH tests are all well and good, but shy of showing a 17p deletion, the most important factor in deciding to treat the disease is your clinical condition.

On the way from Calais

The last time I recall feeling as nauseous as I did post-bendamustine was many years ago on a boat from France to England. This was in the pre-Chunnel days. I grew whiter and whiter as the white cliffs of Dover approached, barely managing to contain my nausea with each bumping wave.

The nausea that set in last Friday never got to the barfing point, but it was uncontrollable with ondansetron (Zofran) tablets, which worked less well than Pepto-Bismol. To keep my kidneys flushing the dead CLL cells through, I needed to be drinking lots of water, and water is the last thing a sensitive stomach can tolerate. If I never see another can of Blue Sky New Century Cola again, it will be too soon. Needless to say, food was also rather unwelcome; I managed to lose some noticeable weight since nothing was appealing, although my stomach eventually discovered that macaroni and cheese was tolerable.

The fatigue was also way out of the ordinary. I would sleep 14 hours, on and off, and wake up tired. Today, Wednesday, is the first day that feels normal, both in terms of fatigue and nausea.

Although it sometimes felt as if my hemoglobin had taken a hit -- benadamustine can lower hemoglobin temporarily in about 90% of cases -- it turned out that wasn't the case. Comparing some numbers from the day before I started the second round to six days after I finished it: hemoglobin 10.8 before, 10.5 after; platelets 147 before, 138 after; absolute neutrophils 4.9 before, 5.4 after (as in the first round, I had a Neulasta shot on the day after completing treatment). The only dramatic change was in absolute lymphoctye count: 13.6 before, 2.1 after. I don't think my ALC has ever been so low.

UPDATE: My blood work from two weeks after treatment showed signs of decline in hemoglobin (down to 9.3) and platelets (110). Absolute lymphocyte count was 1.4, a new record low.

The rigors, minus the mortis

Last Tuesday's plan was to infuse the rituximab, then the bendamustine. My reaction to rituximab, a drug I have had countless times, was surprising. I was given prophylactic Benadryl and Solu-Medrol and expected pretty smooth sailing. About 15 minutes in, my face turned red and I felt some shortness of breath. This eventually abated, thanks to stopping the treatment, accompanied by some oxygen.

About 10 minutes after the infusion resumed, I experienced what the chemo nurses called "the rigors." This symptom was appropriately named, as it involved rigorous uncontrollable shaking. You can wear out your thigh muscles fast when this happens. Imagine having "the chills" but it's all coming from an internal place, so it doesn't matter how many blankets they pile on you, you still can't get warm. I think the rigors lasted about 15 or 20 minutes, during which time I found myself wondering whether this was what the passengers on the Titanic went through when they fell into the icy Atlantic. It finally abated, thanks to some more Solu-Medrol and Benadryl, as well as some Demerol. The Rituxan was stopped and I was given the bendamustine; reversing the order sometimes helps in such cases. Sure enough, when the Rituxan infusion was resumed later, it was completed without incident.

Why would someone who had managed to accommodate Rituxan for years with minor reactions, if any, suddenly develop these sort of symptoms? Again, who knows? With groundless abandon, I theorize that Revlimid changed something in my immune function. The Revlimid put an end to my autoimmune hemolytic anemia, but also led to a more hair-trigger allergy response in terms of skin rashes. Perhaps it also created a microenvironment less friendly to Rituxan.

My next sojourn in the chair is scheduled for mid-September. Keeping my eyes on the prize, I look forward to making more progress against the disease. But I'm not counting on an easy ride, and I will lay in a supply of macaroni and cheese, just in case.

It's chemo time

Treatment starts Tuesday. I have decided to go with bendamustine and rituximab (aka Treanda and Rituxan), the first round of which will be given in the hospital so I can be monitored for tumor lysis.

As readers of this blog know, I have been looking for a kinase inhibitor trial for some time. A series of events out of my control has kept me out of trials, and my clinical condition now demands something bigger and stronger.

I was invited into the CAL-101 plus ofatumumab trial at UCLA last August, only to be told that there was a mistake by the company that organizes the trials and that the slot didn't actually exist. Had this worked out, it would have been ideal, since I was still at Stage 2 with ample hemoglobin and platelets. It would probably have been a seamless transition from the lenalidomide (Revlimid) I was on, and it probably would have forestalled the situation I now find myself in. At last count, hemoglobin was 7.9, platelets were 96, and the lymph nodes are bigger than ever. My spleen is 6 cm below the costal margin and the liver is, in the words of my oncologist, Dr. Droll, "pronounced."

In March, I was invited into the ABT-199 trial at the University of Arizona Cancer Center. I went there for the testing that is required before entering the trial, only to find out that there was now a problem between the drug company, Abbott, and UA. Since then I have been able to piece together some of the story; it appears that a failure to do something right at UA lead to the suspension of recruitment there. Which left me with nothing other than the promise that I would have first crack when a slot opened in the AVL-292 trial, in which UA was also participating.

The slot for AVL-292 finally opened, and I was faced with a difficult fact: Hemoglobin of 9.0 is required for admission, and while mine had been a steady 9.2 for months, it dropped to 8.5 and now 7.9. So I wasn't going to get in the trial regardless.

The cart before the horse

This all dragged on much longer than anticipated, and as it did my hemoglobin began to head south. It became apparent to me that between my failing marrow and disease bulk, using a kinase inhibitor would be like trying to stop a house from burning down with a garden hose. Even if it addressed the nodes to some extent, it was almost assuredly not going to address the marrow, or do so with much depth and rapidity, and that is probably the worst problem I have at the moment.

I went in for a bone marrow biopsy on Thursday; I haven't heard the official results, but the person who did the BMB -- and all she does is BMBs, day in and day out -- said my marrow was "packed." I'm not surprised.

(For BMB fans, of which there are none, it is worth noting that they put me under for the procedure with propofol, as well as using lidocaine on my hip. This is the way to go as far as I'm concerned. I woke up a few minutes early and felt her digging the needle around in my hip bone; it was much more pleasant being knocked out.)

Ultimately, it makes a lot more sense to deliver as big a blow as I can to the disease now, and then follow up with a trial, probably a kinase inhibitor, as maintenance afterward. I might also consider using lenalidomide as maintenance; perhaps at a low dose I could tolerate it, and with less disease burden it might not be as overreactive in terms of tumor flare as it proved to be last November.

The choice

Basically, there are two choices for Big Chemo these days: FCR or BR. In my case, given the low hemoglobin and the fact that I had autoimmune hemolytic anemia from 2007 to 2010, FCR is just too risky. While the CR can moderate fludarabine's ability to trigger AIHA, it is still a risk, and one that someone with a hemoglobin of 7.9 should not take.

Bendamustine is newish, at least in practice in the U.S., and is supposed to be less myelosuppressive than FCR. Reading anecdotal case histories, one finds that most patients get through it with good results. There are exceptions, usually when neutrophils crash, triggering bad reactions, which is why using Neulasta during treatment makes some sense.

The most reputable paper on BR comes from the German CLL Study Group, which examined the treatment in a tough group of relapsed and refractory patients. The abstract is available here. For those who don't know, bendamustine was developed in East Germany. After reunification, it attracted the interest of researchers and drug companies. An alkalyting agent like cyclophosphamide, it also seems to have properties similar to purine analogues like fludarabine.

The full paper from the German group is worth reading. Bendamustine can work on those who are fludarabine-refractory, with 45.5% responding. It can also work on those who have had  rituximab, and I have had plenty in years past. Of seven patients who had previously received rituximab, five responded with a partial remission.

A disturbing fact involves Richter's Transformation. Four of 78 patients were diagnosed with Richter's Transformation after the end of treatment. The authors imply this was unrelated to treatment, but I'm not so sure. Richter's can be set up by profound immunosuppression resulting from treatment; just because it doesn't show up until later doesn't mean treatment had nothing to do with it.

The bottom line is that all therapy comes with risks; kinase inhibitors are not risk-free, as Chaya Venkat makes clear in a recent report at CLL Topics Updates.

What I can expect

Based on the German data and my clinical situation, I am hoping for a partial remission that significantly reduces the nodes and clears out the marrow to a great extent. I am not anticipating a CR, despite the optimistic words of Dr. Daruka Mahadevan at UA, who said BR would "clean me out."

This is why maintenance should be initiated soon after I complete BR in December. I need to keep the disease in check through some means; if there has been a lesson for me in my experience since November, it is "don't let up."

I will report on BR in some detail as I experience it; little has been written, even anecdotally, about patient experiences with the drug, and it is here to stay as a major player in CLL.

I'll be doing the first round in the hospital so I can be monitored 24/7 for tumor lysis. In someone with my disease bulk, so many CLL cells could die so quickly that my kidneys might be at risk. Both Dr. Mahadevan and Dr. Droll thought this was a good idea, and I can't argue. As much as I don't like the hospital, I like my kidneys. I also expect that Dr. Droll will go with a lower-than-usual dose of bendamustine in the beginning, another way to guard against potential problems.

And so the next chapter begins in my CLL Diary. I am looking forward to the treatment, which I hope will restore some of the quality of life that I have lost. I had seven years of relatively easy CLL; when things head south, one is reminded of how difficult (and, yes, how potentially deadly) this disease can be.

Hurry up and wait

Those of us with chronic lymphocytic leukemia are familiar with the concept of "watch and wait," which means being a patient patient while your disease take its course. This can involve a certain degree of dis-ease (pun intended) as you and your doctor lurk about, waiting for just the right moment to begin treatment, should that become necessary. 

Of late I feel like I've been experiencing something called "hurry up and wait," which is what you do when your disease definitely needs treatment but you are waiting for the best treatment option to make itself available, which is supposed to happen Any Day Now.

"Watch and wait" drives Type A personalities a little bit crazy, which isn't really a problem for me. "Hurry up and wait," on the other hand, can be a bit of a challenge.

In my case, since the end of the Revlimid era last November, the CLL has taken a turn for the worse, compounded by departing doctors, insurance runarounds, and potential clinical trials that have proven to be trials in more ways than one. I've written about some of this, and am here to provide a little update now.

The good news is that Any Day Now there should be an opening in a kinase inhibitor trial with my name on it. I've been waiting on two such choices for a while. 

The first, which I'll call Trial One, almost came to fruition six weeks ago. In fact, I was all dressed up for extensive testing for a trial slot, only to arrive and find I had no place to go. Seems an "adverse event" in the trial of said inhibitor had just raised a big red flag at corporate headquarters and further patient accrual was being put off. All this happened in real time as I sat in my hotel, or in the Vietnamese restaurant adjacent to my hotel. Eventually I was sent home with the knowledge that while Trial One was probably out for the forseeable future, there was a Trial Two that would have an opening in another month, give or take.

And, so, here I wait at home, far from pho, disappointed but cautiously optimistic that I might make it into the second trial, in which no adverse events have been reported to date, at least that I know of.

You could argue that I am lucky the adverse event in Trial One didn't happen to me. It was an unexpected case of severe tumor lysis, apparently, which means massive, immediate die-off of leukemia cells that, uncontrolled, can damage the kidneys. Trials are called trials for a reason, and as much as we like to think of ourselves as intelligent, forward-thinking patients, we are also in fact risk-taking lab rats when we sign on the dotted line. So maybe I dodged a bullet by not making it into Trial One, which would not have been so disappointing had the principal investigator not been so genuinely enthusiastic about its potential to help me.

Now, I could go into names of drugs and names of doctors here, but what I have heard is second-hand, and I'm not in the business of reporting such things as absolute fact. This is a blog, not journalism, and there is a huge difference between the two that I still hold somewhat sacred, having worked in the news business back when double-checking the facts counted for something.

To keep my CLL at bay while waiting for trials, I have been taking huge pulsed doses of steroids every few weeks. My new local hem/onc calls it the "myeloma dose" -- 40 mg of dexamethasone daily for four days. The advantage is that it does reduce the nodes temporarily, and it has bettered my platelets a bit (they're now at 101) while perhaps also keeping my hemoglobin steady in the low 9s, which isn't so awful once you get used to it. Plus the steroids leave your system in under six days, and the prophylactic meds (antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals) also leave quickly, meaning that you can be ready to qualify for a clinical trial without a long delay.

Since 2007, I've had a fair amount of experience with steroids, about which I plan to write at some point soon. I think they're a good but problematic stop-gap, and nothing more. Steroids are a potentially useful component in any "hurry up and wait" strategy, but they're no way to live.

The late Dr. Terry Hamblin once pointed out that in end-stage cases he would prescribe steroids once a month just to keep the patient going, and I can see how, when all else fails, it beats the alternative. 

Fortunately, we now have more alternatives, such as the kinase inhibitors, as well as Revlimid for those who can tolerate it, not to mention the supercharged T cells being studied at such places as the University of Pennsylvania.

Which brings us to the real game to win here. I call it "slow down and wait." By that I mean, allow science to outpace your CLL by just enough that it can save your life. I feel like I'm cutting it close on this one, but there really is no other choice, except to go marching off to the Relapsed-and-Refractory Factory and await the end.

Call me irresponsible, accuse me of "dithering" in the face of my own unplanned obsolescence, but I am not comfortable with following a conventional wisdom that can change from one day, or week, or month, to the next. In CLL, action can mean progress, but it can also mean the illusion of progress. Doing something just to do something may not always be the most rational course. So I often find myself taking my chances with inaction.

"Slow down and wait" involves a certain amount of powerlessness, of accepting things you probably cannot change, among them the possibility that Fate might throw something at you, for good or ill. By making wise (or just plain lucky) treatment choices you might be able to control the disease long enough to buy more time, but there are no guarantees, since the disease can always take a turn for the worse at a whim. As to the pace of scientific progress -- and the availability of its fruits in your locale -- that is all luck, pure and simple. 

So far, I've been fortunate that science has done more since my diagnosis in 2003 than I, or perhaps anyone else, might have expected. My disease behaved decently until last fall, and now has settled into a new plateau, worse than it was but not getting worse, at least yet.

And Any Day Now, well, I hope to be trying a new treatment that might just control this thing. So I'm hurrying up and waiting in order to slow down and wait some more. Welcome to CLL.

Revlimid, in retrospect

Now that my year-and-a-half experiment with Revlimid -- aka lenalidomide -- is likely done for good, I think it's appropriate to sum up what I've learned.

Blogs tend to blurt out information that gets disconnected after awhile; my training as a feature writer tells me to sum up and provide context. For those chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients considering Revlimid, I hope my anecdotal experience might be of some use, which is why I am writing this.

I say "anecdotal" with all the usual warnings, as in YMMV -- Your Mileage May Vary -- and with this drug, it probably will. 

Pills are small and easy to take, but this one is not, on so many levels. For a little capsule that's supposed to be an "immunomodulator," it can easily provide more grinding fits and challenges than regular chemo. In CLL, lenalidomide comes with a wide degree of patient tolerance issues. One of them ultimately derailed the drug for me, but until it did, this stuff was almost golden.

Today, it is being eclipsed by the buzz about kinase inhibitors with license-plate names: CAL-101, ABT-199, AVL-292, PCI-32765, and so on. These drugs are in trials with promising results; while they may end up being a first choice over lenalidomide for many patients, in some cases they may not. Revlimid is here to stay for CLL, and it is a useful option to have. I used it from March 2010 until November 2011, with three months off starting in March 2011.

Revlimid modulates the immune system. Somehow. And in people with weakened immunity, such as CLL, this can do a couple of great things. One, it can cut down on infections, sinus and otherwise. In fact, it has been suggested that low doses of lenalidomide can be given to older people -- not necessarily CLLers, just older people who tend to get sicker easier -- as a means of keeping the immune system more functional. I have been fortunate in my CLL career not to have been especially infection-prone, despite my immunoglobulins being in the tank for nine years. While on Revlimid I was infection free -- not even a sinus minus clogging up my yap.

Revlimid normalized my blood counts, and it has done this for a lot of people. My absolute lymphocyte count wasn't too high to start with, as most of my disease is located in my 11q-deleted lymph nodes. But at one point my CBC became picture-perfect, frame-able even. You couldn't tell by the numbers that anything was wrong.

And this is a really big deal -- while using Revlimid, my very nasty, recurring case of autoimmune hemolytic anemia resolved. From the moment that the AIHA was diagnosed in March 2007, until Revlimid put a stop to it, I was bedeviled by serious hemolysis and treatments that began to fail, one after another, until I was left getting pretty heavy chemo (Rituxan, dexamethasone, and cyclophosphamide) as frequently as every three months. And there was some question about how long that could continue before a splenectomy became a necessity.

Dr. Asher Chanan-Khan, probably the country's leading lenalidomide-CLL researcher, told me in an e-mail before I started the drug that he had seen two actively hemolyzing patients -- hemolysis means your macrophages are eating your own red blood cells, which they will continue to do until you have none left and die --  whose hemolysis resolved while on Revlimid.

My own experience has led me to prosthelytize on these pages more than once, and so let me shout it out again for all my AIHA fellow-sufferers to hear: Please, please, consider Revlimid, especially if you are finding that the usual treatments (steroids, rituximab) are failing. If it does for you what it did for me, you'll have enough red blood cells to do some serious dancing in the streets. After a year of Revlimid, my hemoglobin was back up to 15.1 -- the exact number it was at on the day of my CLL diagnosis in 2003. I turned Coombs negative and remain so at this moment.

Revlimid also reduced my lymph nodes to a noticeable degree. I would say -- and I am guessing, since some nodes are more palpable than others -- by up to about half. In a nodey guy like me, that is great news. It took a long time. But it was slow and steady. And in CLL, slow and steady is often all you need to win the race, or at least to stay where you need to be when in competition with the growth of the disease.

Now, here's a real Revlimd success story. I have a friend with 11q-deleted CLL who went into a Revlimid clinical trial as frontline treatment. His lymphocyte count had reached a half-million (that's not a typo). In the trial, patients are upped from 5 mg daily to 25 mg daily over time, if they can tolerate it. And my lucky friend proved able to tolerate it, and to get the benefit from the maximum dosage. 

By the end of his two-year stint, his counts had normalized, what nodes were left were barely palpable, his hemoglobin was high, and a bone marrow biopsy showed improvement. Platelets were a bit low, but you can't have everything, and he's been told they should recover. He had found himself an excellent way to start out controlling his CLL without burning any bridges. He has had treatment, but not chemotherapy, which sets up disease resistance. From all indications, he can go on to do any other treatment out there, or take advantage of a new treatment that comes along, and he can expect it to work as well on him as if he had never been treated. (And, of course, he can always do more Revlimid at relapse.)

That is great news in the Second Chance department, which is so important in CLL,  and which cannot be understated. Preserving a second chance is what I was trying to do with single-agent Rituxan back in the days before Revlimid. That turned out not to work. Once you've done single-agent Rituxan, you have diminished your response to future treatments. It's not a free ride. But since Revlimid is an immunomodulator and works on totally different principles from chemotherapy, it does not appear to set up disease resistance. (Not that it won't make changes in the immune system, and only time will tell if there's something important about it that researchers and patients have been missing so far.)  But if I were starting out and needing treatment, I would seriously consider Revlimid for the Second Chance reason, as well as for its potential to do the job in the blood, nodes, and marrow that needs to be done.

And if I had been through the chemo mill, and was pretty much out of Second, Third, and Fourth chances, I would also look into Revlimid. There are some CLLers out there who have been kept alive for years now with daily doses of Revlimid. Fate has allowed them to tolerate it, and it works as well on the nasty 17p-deleted CLL clones that are left after the Chemo Wars as on the "nice" ones you tend to find more of at the start. For these people, Revlimid truly is golden.  

Dosages are tricky. Not everyone can tolerate 25 mg. Celgene, the drug's maker, has recommended that as a routine matter, CLLers not be given more than 10 mg daily. Some patients are coasting along at 5 mg, in maintenance. Some can tolerate 10, some higher. Some can't tolerate it at all.

In my case, doses as low as 5 mg have caused problems. I'll get into that in a minute. Suffice it to say that the higher the dose you can take, the more the drug will probably be able to do for you. Finding that right dose, and watching out for symptoms that could indicate drug intolerance, requires a great deal of patience. It helps to have a doctor who has used the drug in CLLers, or at least in those for whom it was originally intended, patients with MDS. You need to be aware of your body and on top of symptoms if you are going to experiment with it, and let's face it -- in CLL, Revlimid is still experimental.

Revlimid can also make you feel kind of out of it. Before I get into more serious tolerance issues, one thing my friend and I both noticed, and that some others have noticed, too, is that lenalidomide can bring a certain dullness to your life. I wouldn't say fatigue, necessarily. But this drug is the enemy of multi-tasking. It can lead to a lack of focus or sharpness. You can operate heavy machinery, you can go to work, you can do all the things you normally do, but somehow you do these things slower, or somewhat more detached, or in a somewhat foggy world involving less concentration. This is not a good-time, party drug. When Marilyn and I flew back East for my step-mom's big 70th birthday bash, I stopped taking Revlimid a few days before. I knew that if I were off of it, I'd be enjoying the party and making conversation. If I were on it, I'd be sitting in a corner trying to remember who so-and-so was from a distance. Suffice it to say that lenalidomide is no help with libido, either. While not everyone reports these sorts of symptoms, It's ongoing use could lead to a somewhat lower quality of life in some respects. That's not enough to make it not a choice, but it's potentially part of the experience (and for some it does get better over time.)

Revlimid can lead to serious clotting issues. This is one of those things that Celgene is very up-front about, and that the nurses who dispense the drug are always reminding you of.

By now, if you've read CLL Diary, you know that clotting was my problem, and that this shifted the risk-reward scale in favor of abandoning lenalidomide. To recap, I have a family history of clotting troubles. My mother died of a pulmonary embolism at 57,  just two years older than I am now. Her older son -- my older half-brother -- suffered several strokes, one of which took his life this past July at the age of 66. I saw him become bedridden and incontinent, barely able to move one hand, hardly able to swallow, eventually surviving through a stomach plug. I saw him decline, both physically and mentally. One night, a few weeks before he died, in a moment of frightening clarity, he shouted something from the hospital bed that had been set up in his living room: "What a miserable existence!"

It is possible to live with CLL and have good quality of life. In the QOL department, there are many worse conditions to have, not all of them cancerous. Staring my brother's fate in the face, I was ever reminded that worse things could await me if I were not careful.

I had two transient ischemic attacks, aka mini-strokes, while on lenalidomide, and then a third incident that probably qualified as something of the same. The first incident came about four months in, while I was on 10 mg daily, and involved about ten minutes of aphasia, or language difficulty. It resolved completely, and I ignorantly chalked it up to "chemo brain" and put it out of my mind. 

The second attack came some some months later, after things had been going so well that my oncologist gave me the go-ahead to up the dose to 15 mg daily. We wanted to go in and get at those nodes. After a week or so, the same language difficulty appeared again, also for about ten minutes. This time I went to see the doc, and she put two and two together, and clotting issues took center stage.

Which is why, like my lucky friend, who underwent a supervised trial in which Coumadin was required prophylaxis, I would not advise anyone to go on Revlimid without also going on Coumadin, or warfarin. Even if you don't think you have a clotting problem, it is wise to guard against it. If it is good enough for Dr. Chanan-Khan's patients, it should be good enough for your doctor's, too. Like any prophylactic drug we CLLers take -- such as allopurinol, acyclovir, or Bactrim -- it is designed to guard against a problem occurring. And at a low dose, such as 2 mg daily, it should not present a problem for most people. It is insane not to do it, IMHO.

The third incident occurred in September of last year, and came and went over the course of a week. By that time, I was on higher doses of warfarin, which were not improving my clotting time much at all, and lower doses of Revlimid, such as 5 mg three times a week. I felt a transient numbness on the left side of my mouth, sort of the way you feel after you've been to the dentist and the Novocaine has started to wear off. Simultaneously, I also felt this numbness in my left hand. This resolved after about 15 minutes, but it came and went for short periods during the following week.

Finally, of course, there is the story of my lenalidomide gotterdammerung and the abscessed lymph node, catalogued a few posts back complete with messy photos. Despite a year-and-a-half of being on the drug (and sometimes off of it), resuming it at 5 mg just four days in a row caused such unholy tumor flare as to land me in the hospital.

Which leads me to a final point: Revlimid can do unanticipated things to the immune system. In my case, it appeared to goose it up over time. There was a three-month period, starting in March 2011, when I was off the drug. I was, in part, expecting to get a slot in a kinase inhibitor trial, which did not pan out, and I needed to be "drug free" for 28 days before starting the trial.

Just before resuming Revlimid after this hiatus, I came down with a case of hives. This was unusual, since my allergies don't usually take that form. It resolved with Benadryl (speaking of Zombie drugs) and I went on to restart Revlimid at a general course of 5 mg three days a week. Over the course of the last summer, I was constantly getting hives, several times a week. Move me to a spot with a new allergen, and it would start. Let me get a little sweaty in Arizona in the summer -- which is impossible not to do -- and the the hives would come again. It was all easily controlled; in fact I began taking Allegra every other day just to keep it away. But something in my immune reaction was more hair-trigger, way more prone to act quickly than it had been in the past.

My theory -- and, again, this is anecdotal guesswork -- is that Revlimid, which had rewritten my immune system in some good ways, also rewrote it in some more dangerous ones. A recent paper by Dr. Chanan-Khan and others discusses mechanism of action at some length, and basically points out that lenalidomide works best when there are lots of NK and T-cells present. (The latter, little marvels, also surveil against squamous cell skin cancer, another problem I've had, and something common to CLLers; Revlimid appears to have kept a lid on those, too.)

The paper, Tumor flare reaction associated with lenalidomide treatment in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia predicts clinical response, is worth reading if you're thinking of taking the lenalidomide leap. It appeared in the May 15, 2011 issue of Cancer, which is published by the American Cancer Society. Now, here is where I teach you to fish. Most journals that usually charge for articles will provide one free for the personal use of a patient if you just write and ask. In this case, contact canceredoff at cancer.org. 

Tumor flare, the paper explains, predicts response in Revlimid. There is a two-thirds chance that you will encounter it. From the very beginning, tumor flare was always a challenge for me. It came on big when I first started the drug, then remained at a lower but tolerable level during treatment as the ongoing battle with the nodes was engaged. What happened at the end with the abscess was one for the record books. Again, just a guess, but I wonder if the Revlimid had created in me a condition by which my immune system overreacted when the Revlimid itself was re-introduced at a 5 mg sustained dose, higher than I had been taking for some time.

Talk about ironic. In many ways, I responded very well to Revlimid, perhaps a little too well. It created too much fire to play with.

But it got me through a rough patch when I needed it, and it saved my ass in 2010 and much of 2011, getting me in a bumpy fashion to the great hope of 2012, kinase inhibitors.

So, thank you Celgene. And if you, fellow patient, are in the right position to tolerate it, Revlimid could be an important option for treatment. Just consider that it may not be easy, and do expect the unexpected.

(A final note: readers will recall that I began my Revlimid regimen in 2010 along with infusions of ofatumumab, aka Arzerra. The Arzerra was stopped after September's dose as the Revlimid appeared to be doing most of the work; I was on (and off) Revlimid for another eleven months after the Arzerra ended, so I do not think it clouds the story much. The one thing it may have done is mitigate the tumor flare I experienced at the beginning; perhaps it also served to keep the immune-goosing effects of the Revlimid somewhat in check.)

New year, new challenges

It's 2012, and my CLL journey continues along a new stretch of Shit Creek. I am, at the moment, paddle-free.

But let me take a moment to wish you all a Happy New Year. May we continue on in enough good health to continue on, and may we have time left over after dealing with medical matters to enjoy our lives, our loved ones, and the beauty and bounty that the Earth provides.

It's important to keep that perspective, even in difficult times. As you know, I lost my older brother to a stroke six months ago, so mortality seems that much more fragile to me than it did before. 

Then, this morning, I scrolled through the list of blogs I keep on the right side of this page and found that another CLL compatriot, Jackie Sue, has passed on. 

Everywhere in CLL World I see struggle; often with enough success to keep on fighting another day, sometimes with less success than was hoped. And all this is occurring against a rather jaw-dropping array of new progress in CLL, namely the kinase inhibitors such as CAL-101 and PCI-32765 and the CAR trials of juiced up killer T-cells, such as CART-19 at the University of Pennsylvania. (This PDF from CLL Global gives a good, brief rundown on both.)

I cannot help but conclude, as I think of friends I have lost, as I think of those who are struggling as I am, how close we are to salvation, and yet so far.

I blog less these days. One big reason is that I am busy with our ever-growing and ever-demanding online business, not to mention personal matters, usually my health and that of my dear Marilyn. 

But when there is a little time left over, I find myself hesitating to write. In part, I have run out of useful things to jabber about. My training as a newspaper editor etched into my head that a story has to be worth being told to merit space in print.

Another reason is, for lack of a better term, battle fatigue. You can paint lipstick on the CLL experience, but it's still a pig, and after eight years I have seen enough pain, suffering, and life-altering disruption to conclude that having CLL completely and totally sucks. There's nothing good to be said about it, and therefore I find myself not wanting to talk about it. 

That said, it was my promise when I started this blog to describe my journey honestly and completely, so that my experience will be a useful learning tool for those who come along. And so, the latest:

The good news is that the abscess referred to in my last post has healed, the drain has come out of my neck, and the infection is gone. The node in question has not enlarged very much; indeed that side of my neck shows less nodeyness than the other. Perhaps if we CLLers stick drains in our nodes the disease will simply drip away. (Yes, I'm kidding.)

The bad news is that my disease has entered a new, more aggressive phase. For the first time, my red counts have dropped due to marrow impaction. My hemoglobin has been in the 10 to 11 range for the past couple of months. Platelets have also fallen, to just above 100. I am on the doorstep of Stage 4, measuring by those numbers.

What's worse, the nodes have returned with a vengeance, that one area of my neck aside. My guess is that this is simply the product of ineffective control of the disease for many months, as opposed to some new mutation. Until I have a FISH test, I won't know for sure.

Let's back up for a minute. I'll try to cover some history, briefly, that would have made for several blog posts had I had the time.

After a year of treatment, I went off Revlimid (lenalidomide) last March, in part because I wanted to give my body a break. As you may recall, I had two transient ischemic attacks while on the drug. Clotting problems run in my family and claimed the lives of both my brother and my mother.

Another reason was the expectation that I might qualify for a CAL-101 clinical trial. I will call this the Godot trial, because I kept waiting and waiting and waiting for a slot to open, and was told "any day now" for what became months and months. What was supposed to have occurred in April was delayed until August. Even then, it all seemed rather promising. I had restarted Revlimid in July because the need to treat could wait no longer. Calistoga, the maker of CAL-101, was even willing to waive the requirement that I should not have had treatment 28 days before enrolling. When I was about to pack my bags, I got the bad news: due to a clerical error, the slot in question did not exist. And they could not just add a new one, since the maker of the other drug in the trial, ofatumumab (aka Arzerra), would not provide any more free drug.

I was told that drug companies hire other companies to organize and manage trials for them, and that one of these companies had made the mistake. The principal investigator was quite aplogetic and said this had never happened in all the years he had been conducting trials. Goodbye, paddle.

Meanwhile, back at Revlimid Ranch, things weren't going so well. When I restarted the drug, I did so with a great deal of care paid to the clotting issue. At the time I began Revlimid 2.0, my brother lay in the hospital, unable to move his left side and barely able to move his right. 

I had a complete clotting panel done, which confirmed my propensity to clot. Indeed, it came out worse than a similar panel that was run on my brother.

I had been on warfarin for a little while prior to quitting Revlimid in March, but my clotting time always remained pretty much normal, which means fast. And so when I began Revlimid again, we added more warfarin, to which, it turns out, I don't easily respond. Later, my doctor added aspirin to the warfarin. Meanwhile, the Revlimid dose was kept minimal, at 5 mg twice a week and occasionally every other day. As it turns out, I wasn't getting enough of the drug.

In November came the first signs of trouble. My red counts showed a drop, and my lymphocyte count showed a jump. Shortly thereafter, I began to notice an orange cast to my urine. I've posted about that several times, and in the past it had always been a sign of hemolysis due to autoimmune hemolytic anemia (AIHA). I assumed that was the case this time as well.

Revlimid, an immunomodulator, had seemed to put an end to my AIHA. Tests were ordered, and in the meantime I went on Revlimid 5 mg daily in an effort to head the hemolysis off at the pass. It made sense at the time: Maybe I needed more Revlimid to control the situation.

But the testing showed no signs of AIHA, and also that red counts were continuing to drop. And the orange urine remained, which brought me to the next logical conclusion: internal bleeding due to blood thinners. 

So I stopped the thinners and the orange disappeared almost immediately. And no blood thinners meant no Revlimid, which was coincidentally giving me new fits in terms of tumor flare. (Goodbye, other paddle.) After merely five days of 5 mg, the minimal dose Celgene makes and well below that considered optimal in trials, I looked freakishly flarish (see second-to-last photo in my last post). 

I had always had a tumor flare reaction with Revlimid, which is actually a sign that the drug is working, but never anything like this.

It felt like a Vise-Grip was closing around my neck from the back, leaving just a bit of my Adam's Apple free, and making it hard to open my mouth very far. It was at this point that the abscess formed, although it took another week, during which steroids brought down all the flare but the abscess, before I ended up in the ER and the diagnosis was made.  

During the December Drain Festival, I could not treat the CLL because of the wounded node. Now that it has been removed, and the node is healing -- the ENT doc says to give it at least two weeks -- treatment is back on the table.

I am looking into a couple of clinical trials, as well as into a treatment to keep me going in the interim. One thing I have learned about trials, of course, is that Things Take Time. Another thing I have learned is that the study drug may be free, but all other expenses, from administering the drugs to CT-scans to the cost of the drug that the study drug is being tested with, are usually out-of-pocket. Unless covered by insurance (insert guffaw here).

The treatment I may do soon is R+HDMP, or perhaps Arzerra plus HDMP, which is a whole 'nother can of worms.

I've been stymied at every turn by my increasingly stingy health insurance plan, which covers fewer and fewer doctors -- including treatment in the office of my own oncologist -- and fewer and fewer drugs. Clinical trial expenses, forget it. And while Arzerra may have FDA approval for CLL, to borrow a phrase from a popular viral video, honey badger don't care. 

It's gotten so bad that I've found myself flirting with the idea of dropping coverage for six months so that I can get on the new federal Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan. I know, this is probably a bad idea, especially since my little hospital getaway (two fun-filled nights and three fun-filled days) came to more than $10,000, of which I will end up paying no more than a third thanks to my insurance, bad as it is 

(I am so looking forward to 2014, when I'll be able to buy decent insurance under the new health care law. I have my issues with President Obama, but from where I sit, he deserves a big, wet kiss for Obamacare, imperfect as it is.)

The cherry on the sundae is that there is a fair degree of tumult at my oncologist's office that is also not helping matters. 

So let's just say that external forces are not making my little canoe trip an easy one. Shit Creek is hard enough to navigate with a paddle. 

But onward I go, mateys, trying not to capsize.

To quote Newt Gingrich (yes, I am quoting Newt Gingrich):

Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.  

Off and on

As a newbie, CLL was the center of my universe. As time has gone on, it has become more like the chronic condition that it is -– albeit a chronic condition with a potentially deadly bite. My focus, by both choice and necessity, has gone elsewhere. I have a business to run, a family to attend to.

Other questions, big and small, tend to take over my day. What is a tambour door? Should I put the old treadmill on Craigslist or Freecycle? Why do the doves always build their nest in the windiest corner of the front porch, from which their nest will be blown away?

Of late, my time and energy has gone toward a more serious and sad situation. My older half-brother, who lives about three hours away, has had a severe, debilitating ischemic stroke. He’s been in the hospital for several weeks. At first it wasn’t clear that he would survive. But he has emerged with his faculties intact, as well as some movement on his right side. At best, he faces the prospect of a long and difficult recovery.

He’s 66, eleven years older than I am, and his current condition has shaken the frame of reference I formed as a child. He was always taller, stronger (he was in the Marines), and more world-wise. Now, in dealing with family issues and the health care system -– all the details, from the mundane to the deeply emotional, things that CLL has prepared me for -– our roles are reversed.  

This is not his first stroke, and our mother died at 57 of a pulmonary embolism and had a history of phlebitis. I don’t respond to the blood thinner warfarin (Coumadin) at 2 mg and 4 mg doses. Apparently clotting issues run in the family. 

Which brings us back to Revlimid (lenalidomide), a potential side effect of which is the creation of blood clots. Readers will recall that I have had two TIAs, or transient ischemic attacks (mini-strokes) while on the drug.

*  *  *

I am acutely aware that I have been allowed the time to deal with all things great and small courtesy of Revlimid. For a year, it stepped in to halt the progress of a fast-moving disease when nothing else would reliably work.

Starting March 15 of this year, I went off Revlimid for three months. One reason was to give my body a rest, in part because clotting issues had arisen. Another was to see how long my remission held without it. And a third was related to my application for a clinical trial involving CAL-101, the node-busting drug that has created a great deal of hope among CLLers with bulky disease, which pretty much describes me.

I may yet get into the trial, if the trial arm is ever organized. It has been “two more weeks” for months now, and even the principal investigator has stopped trying to predict when the drug companies involved will sign off on everything. When the arm is finally organized, I’ll need to be off Revlimid for 28 days before the initial round of testing and evaluation to determine my eligibility.

Meanwhile, I learned during these three months that I probably shouldn’t be off Revlimid for more than about six weeks. The first month was quite encouraging: The nodes continued to get smaller and smaller and I lost weight. The second month involved a brief plateau. During the third the nodes began to come back, steadily and surely.

A month into my “vacation,” which was also a vacation from blood thinners, I had a PT/INR test done. My clotting time came out at baseline, 1.0, which is exactly where it had been when I had been on warfarin. My oncologist has now ordered an extensive clotting panel -– Nurse Dracula took 14 vials of blood -– to determine if there is anything unusual going on. This will help us determine what the best blood-thinning strategy is.

In the meantime, I have started a minimal dose of Revlimid, 5 mg every other day, accompanied by aspirin. After a few doses I’m noticing a fair degree of tumor flare, not as bad as it was when I first began the drug, but definitely pronounced. This will probably last for two to three weeks.

* * *

During all this time my blood tests showed some interesting things.

As expected, my absolute lymphocyte count rose, from 8.6 just before I stopped to 19 two months later, then dropping back to 10.5 just before I resumed. This fallback was probably due to the CLL cells returning to the nodes.

My platelets, which had been increasing before I stopped, quickly fell back to around 130, which is what “normal” has been for me for several years.

My red count remained strong. Hemoglobin was 14.5 just before I quit, 15.1 just before I resumed. This tells me that after three months off the drug, there was no sign of the dreaded autoimmune hemolytic anemia (AIHA), which had plagued me before Revlimid.

So let me repeat here once again what I’ve said in this blog before: I am one anecdotal case but I am pretty solid evidence that Revlimid can have a huge impact on AIHA, even bad cases of it. If you are dealing with this scourge and have begun to run low on traditional options, consider Revlimid!

Finally, there is some bad news in the mix. My B2M had been as high as the 11s while I was on Revlimid. I attributed this to a great deal of ongoing cell-kill as my drug-reinforced immune system did battle with the evil clones. My vacation appears to have substantiated this as the B2M has fallen to a consistent 7.

The bad news is that my baseline B2M is that high. It’s way over the top. In a normal person it should be less than 2.3. In a CLLer it should really be less than 4. So what this tells me is that my disease is still big and aggressive.

And what this means is that Revlimid -– which hopefully will continue to work as it did before -– is going to be a constant and necessary presence in my life, stroke risk and all.

Unless, of course, things work out with CAL-101.

* * *

It's an odd existence. CLL reminds me of handling a rattlesnake. There are people who deal with venemous snakes every day, usually harvesting the venom to use as an antidote to snake bite. These people live with constant danger, and with luck they'll never be bitten. But there's a thin line between living a normal daily existence and something going terribly wrong. My childhood doctor collected snakes as a hobby, and one day his office was closed and he wasn't there anymore.

When I was in first grade we lived in Poston, Arizona, near the Colorado River. It was teeming with wildlife -- mallards, skunks, bobcats, scorpions, and many rattlesnakes. When a rattlesnake got into the house, it was my older brother's job to kill it with a shovel. He would whack off the head and the body would writhe around. I would stand behind him, holding my mother's hand, watching with fascination.

"Don't play with snakes," my mother would constantly remind me. 

Alas, sometimes we have no choice.

I’ll update you in a couple of months. Please accept my apologies for any emails that have gone unanswered. I have had to leave many important things by the wayside to make time to deal with the essential.

Revlimid, the Klopman Diamond

There’s an old joke about the Klopman Diamond. It goes something like this:

A businessman boarded a plane to find, sitting next to him, an elegant woman wearing the largest, most stunning diamond ring he had ever seen. He asked her about it.

"This is the Klopman Diamond," she said. "It is beautiful, but it's like the Hope Diamond; there is a terrible curse that goes with it."

"What's the curse?" the man asked.

"Mr. Klopman."

I’ve now had a year’s worth of experience with Revlimid, aka lenalidomide, and I have come to think of it as the Klopman Diamond of CLL treatments.

In my case, Revlimid is stunningly beautiful when it comes to controlling autoimmune hemolytic anemia, reducing absolute lymphocyte count, and increasing hemoglobin and platelets. It even does a respectable job of reducing lymph nodes. This is pretty much what any CLL patient could want, especially one who has had several other treatments.

But it comes with a curse: unpredictable side effects that in my case have a little too much to do with clot formation. Not for me the simple neutropenia that bedevils many patients, or just the tumor flare and fatigue I reported early on. I get the full Klopman –- i.e. the prospect that some kind of clot will do some kind of damage that I really won’t like.

Presumably the lady with the diamond stays with Mr. Klopman because he provides so well. And so it is with me and Revlimid. It’s a rocky marriage. Happy overall, but punctuated with incidents that create a certain degree of apprehension.

*  *  *

After a year of being on Revlimid most of the time, it’s time for a trial separation. I went off the drug on March 15 and plan to stay off until I need to go on again. It’s time to give my body a rest.

That was my oncologist’s take at a recent meeting, and I agree. There’s no proof that staying on constant Revlimid maintenance (at 5 mg daily) will be better than starting the drug again when I begin to relapse. Patients are handled both ways by leading CLL centers, and this seems to have a lot to do with the guesswork of doctors and the drug tolerance of patients.

In my case, given my proclivity for clot-related problems, there is potentially some value in the “rest” theory. As you may recall, the blood thinner warfarin (Coumadin) was added to my regimen following a TIA, or transient ischemic attack. This started at 2 mg daily. It was increased to 4 mg three days a week, 2 mg four days a week as my PT/INR tests continued to show that I was clotting quickly, like someone who was not on the drug. Even at the higher dose there’s been no improvement in clotting time. Apparently I have a somewhat supernatural ability to clot, which is not useful when taking Revlimid.

I went off Revlimid at a high point. My latest CBC confirms improvement in hemoglobin and platelets that I first reported in my post of February 20. My lymph nodes have reduced nicely; I have lost five pounds since going off the drug and the nodes have gotten smaller. I’m sure that’s not all lymph node weight I’m losing. But I do think it again proves my theory that when on the drug I am in a constant state of tumor flare; off the drug, the nodes reduce to baseline.

I’m not sure they’re at baseline yet. What I can say is that they are definitely improved over a year ago. Without a CT scan I can’t put a number on it. But the nodes I can feel in my neck and under my arms are significantly smaller and a large mass under my right arm has broken up. My abdomen is noticeably slimmer. If I were forced to guess, I'd say the reduction has been up to 50% in some areas, and I'm a very nodey guy.


* * *

After I was diagnosed in 2003, I participated in online discussions about whether chronic lymphocytic leukemia could someday be controlled as a chronic disease, much as diabetes is. It seemed like a pleasant fantasy at the time. What, we wondered, if there was a pill we could take to keep the disease in check?

Today, this might be closer than we could have imagined. Might Revlimid be it? Might CAL-101?

And to what extent will we have to take our chances with Mr. Klopman? 

Only time and trial will tell.

Hemoglobin deja-vu

Periodic CBCs are routine for us CLLers, and they sometimes come with surprises, usually not good ones. For the last year my CBCs have been decent, stable, and dull, but my latest required a double-take.

My hemoglobin was 15.6, up from 13.0 six weeks before. It had been in the 13s since shortly after I began taking Revlimid (lenalidomide) on March 6, 2010. (Yep, the one-year anniversary approaches. I’m thinking of celebrating with a chocolate cupcake topped with white Revlimid pills as sprinkles.)

It turns out that the last time my hemoglobin was that high was in May 2006.  In fact, on the day I was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia -– September 3, 2003 -– it was 15.6. The highest it has ever tested out at is 15.8. So something good is happening in hemo-land.

This is especially encouraging since autoimmune hemolytic anemia (AIHA) has been an almost constant drain on my hemoglobin since early 2007. I take this latest result as a further sign that Revlimid has put a stake through its heartless little heart.

Of course, absent AIHA, CLLers also face the challenge of their bone marrow clogging up with CLL cells, with a resulting gradual decline in red cell production. The NCI guidelines define hemoglobin below 10.0 as the welcome mat into Stage 3 CLL and one of the triggers for treatment. Where my hemoglobin would be absent both the Revlimid and my history of AIHA, I haven't a clue. But seeing it at the same place as it was at diagnosis does provide a not-so-cheap thrill. Maybe I'll have two of those cupcakes.

My test also showed higher platelets. Over the course of my CLL history, they have gradually declined. For the last couple of years they have generally been at about 130. The latest test puts them at 160. Platelets can jump for any number of reasons. For example, they can be sequestered in the spleen and treatment can reduce the spleen, forcing them into the bloodstream. In this case, I doubt my spleen has suddenly become smaller.

So the big question is: Is Revlimid having a positive effect in my bone marrow?  A 2008 MD Anderson study of Revlimid in 44 relapsed and refractory patients reported that 26% experienced “resolution of bone marrow involvement.” How that was tested for and defined was not described in the paper, but it is encouraging nonetheless. I am also aware of patients who are on the drug for a long time and begin to experience, at a certain point, the “kicking in” of improving numbers.

I’ll have to see if the trend continues on future tests. After all, one test is interesting, two are a trend. But I have no reason the believe the test is wrong. I’ve been napping a lot less recently, even when I’ve had less than eight hours of sleep at night, which would be one result of higher hemoglobin. And not all the numbers are higher, so it’s not like the blood counting machine was ascribing a higher count to everything. (My absolute lymphocyte count remains pretty stable at 6.24.) This test was done at the same lab that I've been using for the past year.

Finally, on the Coumadin (warfarin) update front, my dose has been bumped up slightly. It’s now 4 mg on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 2 mg on other days. This came after my PT/INR tests continued to show that I clot faster or the same as normal even though I’m on the blood thinner. My Revlimid dose is now 5 mg five days a week, 10 mg on Wednesday and Sunday. It probably won't go any higher for the foreseeable future.