It’s looking like this is real. I had an uneventful pheresis yesterday and the cells are off to Ohio for training. Reinfusion is scheduled for March 23rd.

The ski trip had to be cut very short to get back in time for the pheresis, but Nancy managed to work miracles getting the storage spaces organized in just one day. I was very disappointed in how easily I fatigued on the slopes and didn’t even try to ski the second day. Then yesterday my Hgb was found to be only 7.9, so I guess I shouldn’t have expected much.

Somebody wasn’t able to use his Mayo slot for the REMS Abecma protocol this month, and I got it! Abecma is the original BluebirdBio bb2121 CAR-T I tried to get years ago. Reported results haven’t been quite as good as the Carvytki that I actually got, but are pretty comparable to what is being seen with most of the bispecifics, so I’m delighted. The murine component of this CAR is perhaps different enough from the murine/llama one I got that there’s plenty of hope the ninjas will survive and multiply enough to give as good a response as I could expect from any other BCMA-directed therapy. The way things are going in the world of myeloma therapy, we probably don’t even need a year more before something novel comes along when this one fails.

Ok, so the ski trip gets cut short. I am NOT complaining.