Cancer – Multiple Myeloma

Transcript

“So what is multiple myeloma? Multiple myeloma is a process that most people haven’t heard of. Not because it’s terribly uncommon, but because it is one of those blood cancers that unless you know someone that has it, it’s usually not something that comes up very often. And the reason is, it is a little difficult to understand. Multiple myeloma usually is a problem when proteins that are produced start depositing in areas that cause problems subtly, usually on your lab work. It can cause you to be anemic. It can cause you to have kidney problems. It can cause you to have bone lesions that you’re not sure where they’re from and it can cause you to have high calcium that’s unexplained. And basically it’s a process what’s called plasma cells. Plasma cells start to kind of grow unregulated in your bone marrow. And they generate these things called immunoglobulins, are basically antibodies, but it’s like one colony, it’s one rogue group or army of immunoglobulins.

That’s way more than it’s supposed to be. So it could be like IGA IgM, IgG. And sometimes it’s not even the rogue army person itself, but it’s the two little guns that are on their belts called free light chains. So you start getting a whole bunch of these proteins or immunoglobulins produced from the plasma cells and they start depositing and causing problems. Usually myeloma now, with a lot of the therapy we have, can be attacked really well with some shots under the skin or in the vein and even oral therapy compared to 20, 30 years ago, before these things, myeloma had a pretty short survival. Now it goes on for years in most circumstances and can potentially be cured with an auto transplant.”