"You Just Wait"

Ahhh, Velcade. The wonder drug.

I'll start by reminding my readers that I didn't think Velcade was giving me any side effects. It didn't then. It does now. I'm on round 3 and I have another round to go.

Velcade is a proteasome inhibitor. As my hubby Ed, the biologist, explained it to me, this means that a vital cell activity is squelched by Velcade.

See, cells rely on the creation of amino acids (proteins). When they're created, some of those proteins are created incorrectly and they need to be identified and chopped into tiny pieces so the cell can dispose of them. If they're not destroyed, the cell eventually dies because these defective proteins build up and kill it.

So what Velcade does is suppress the action of the proteasome, which is the little chopper that seeks and destroys the bad proteins.

Ok, so why would you suppress the action of a necessary defense system? Simple: It is presumed that the cancer cells will die before the regular cells do. So, give the inhibitor until the cancer cells die and then let the regular cells go back to work by eliminating the drug.

The whole thing makes some sort of macabre sense, and it DOES seem to be working, but there are side effects.

See, when I started the drug, my regular cells seemed to be working fine. The proteasomes were working. The drug shut them down, but the cells didn't start filling up with bad proteins immediately. It took time.......

A direct parallel can be drawn with the New York City Sanitation strike some time ago. The garbage trucks stopped rolling and nobody cared. There was no trash on the street on the first day of the strike. There was no trash on the street on the second day either. Then trash started to appear on the street. And more, and more, and more until the sidewalks were full of stinky piles of detritus. Velcade is like that. You and the cells don't really notice...... until the cells get full of garbage proteins and cell death starts. Until you start to feel like hammered dog-doo. Until you discover you have the endurance of a fruit fly.

Don't get me wrong. It's not completely debilitating. It makes me feel lousy and it seems to make me susceptible to all kinds of peripheral illnesses / effects. BUT, it's one hella lot better than Thalidomide.

Anyway, I'll return you to your regular programming.