At last it is time to take the get well cards down! …

The last eighteen months have certainly been long and challenging, but my recent hospital trips “100 days” after my stem cell transplant have now had positive outcomes. At St. James I learned that the stem cell treatment has been successful. The test results from my bone marrow show only “minimal residual levels” of Myeloma, which is as good as can be expected, so I can be considered to be “in remission”. At Bradford Royal Infirmary, my pathway through the next phase of the clinical trial was determined and I am going to get Revlamid as a maintenance treatment. The other pathway was the current NHS standard maintenance treatment for Myeloma which is nothing. So this is good news and we hope that this maintenance treatment should give me the best chance of staying in remission for a long time.
Of course, it would have been nice to have been told “yes you’re cured”, but currently there is no cure for Myeloma, and so that was not going to happen. So we hope that I will be in remission for many years before the Myeloma returns, and maybe, by the time it does, then there may be the hope of a cure. Progress towards a cure will be helped by the research carried out by Myeloma UK that you have been helping to fund through my JustGiving appeal. Thank you all for your generous donations.