My Picture for OSU Poster Campaign for their Clinical Trial
My wife and I had a wonderful visit to OSU and Columbus for many reasons, and will share more soon, but for now let me just reassure those who have been asking: my lab remains mostly boringly normal (I am not even anemic by the standards used at OSU, and my platelets, ALC, ANC, and all my blood chemistries are just fine) and my CT scans continue to demonstrate stable to slightly smaller nodes in my gut. The changes were very minor but they were all in the right direction.
Dr. Byrd says the pattern of rapid node shrinkage over the first few months followed by stable disease or slow improvement is a common pattern observed with ibrutinib.
Some of my gut nodes are still bigger than I would want. The only two nodes left that could be called pathologically enlarged are one near my liver that is unchanged in the last 4 months at 0.7 x 3.9 cm and a second in my right pelvis that is slightly diminished at 1.2 x 2.2 cm, but I can happily live with that news. I had an 11 cm node and other massive clusters when this trial began so this is a huge improvement over my former lumpy bumpy self and my disease burden is slowly shrinking.
The news is all very good.
More to share soon about our tour of Dr. Byrd's lab, my "poster" in the hall of the James, the knee deep fields of Kentucky Bluebells in the metro parks, the amazing Mark Rothko exhibit, and the important research being done at OSU.
Overall, it was a wonderful trip.