Mr Cheeseman arrives

 

After a bit of waiting, I have finally received the entire CT scan that was done on me back in July to confirm the diagnosis of myeloma which blood tests had made seem likely. 

To revise how it works, myeloma is a cancer of the plasma cells produced within your bone marrow. Eventually there are so many fake plasma cells (in fact fake antibody cells which don't actually fight anything) that it starts to disrupt the function of the bones and particularly the normal destruction of old bone tissue and replacement with new bone tissue. You should have about 3% of plasma cells in your bones. By the time I was diagnosed I had 23%, so damage had been done. You end up with 'lytic lesions' on the inside of your bones. These are basically holes in the bones, coming from the inside, and according to the report I have a lot of these all over my body. Not huge ones but present in most of my skeleton from my skull downwards. 

I was trying to find one of the images that would show them and the one above is the best I could do (I'm not a radiologist). It is the scan of a slice through my thigh bones, looking from the back. If you look half way up both of the long bones you can see darker spots and smudges. I believe these are examples of the lytic lesions. They are all, as you can see, adjacent to the marrow areas and pretty widely distributed. 

If it hadn't ben for the routine health check that my GPs did back in June I would have been none the wiser, and the problem is that for some myeloma sufferers the first they know of their condition is when one of their bones fails due to extensive lesions. In the worst case, your vertebrae. So I got lucky, but I am still Mr Cheeseman, with holes all over my body. I suppose I have to concede that I am far from Mr Jarlsberg, but I am certainly Dolcelatte or Roquefort.

Since the chemotherapy started two months ago it has reduced the myeloma significantly, so the fake antibodies (paraprotein) is reduced sharply. I also notice that the pain I had in my ribs is much reduced. This is all a good sign, because it prevents any further damage to my bones. Unfortunately, the treatment will not fill in those holes, so I am stuck with the cheese bones I have, but they do not seem to be in any imminent risk of collapse. Also, I have been started on a course of drugs that will strengthen the rest of my bones over time, so will make it less likely for me to have any fractures. But they have advised me to avoid any contact sports, so rugby and football are probably now behind me. 

Also included with the pictures was the radiologist's report that tells me all the places they found lesions, along with any other bits and pieces they noticed during the scan. Nothing major: wonky spine, small kidney stone, slightly enlarged prostate. But nothing that would surprise me in the MOT on an old car. So for now, the myeloma is the main news and I have another six months of treatment to try to put that back in its box. And then, as I said, I will be party animal number one and will take these old bones out to see what they can get up to!

EDIT: I have to say that there are a couple of the scans which are not so jolly. The one below is through a slice of my skull, looking down from the top, as the CT scan looks at slices of your body. I'm afraid you can see quite a lot of fairly big dark blotches on this slice, which means I have holes in my head, which I need like, I need like, now what kind of metaphor would work for me here?