Holiday Season Update

It's actually a bit hard to tell where I'm at vis-a-vis CLL. I feel OK, but my nodes are slowly growing again. Since I'm at the average response period after flavopiridol (Alvocidib), I should expect these events, I suppose.

My energy level is high and I'm able to work full-time on my own business (since retiring from the State of California). Like a lot of people, I find I'm busier now than when I worked. (Why? When I was working, I just put things off that I couldn't get down. Now I am able to load those tasks onto my daily plate.)

I have not felt sick, and believe that flavopiridol could very well find a place in the doctor's bag of therapies, especially in end-stage CLL patients such as myself. This drug has worked in this 11q del patient who has failed HDMP+R, ISF-35, and FCR.

In any case, I am casting around for something else to do to keep the CLL monster at bay. I personally have given up on a cure (since it doesn't exist, except in the rare case of a long-term transplant patient who survives that ordeal). I'm looking for long-term control, if I can get it.

I suspect that I'll either choose Revlimid+Rituximab or some version of CAL-101 or the new PCI-32765, though currently that trial is often limited to those 65 and older, which I'm not.

There are a number of good-looking candidates for more benign treatment of CLL coming down the pike, but cures they are not. Long-term control in a disease of (usually) the elderly might be enough, though I suspect that Drs. Kipps and Keating don't want to end there.

Have a nice Christmas and New Years'. I can't believe this year is almost over...