Patient Stories

Transcript

LOUIS: I'm an ophthalmologist, an eye surgeon.

My wife was a nurse. I had two children, two grandchildren, very proud of them all.

I’d retired in 2012. We traveled. We hiked. We had a pretty healthy lifestyle.

Nobody ever wants to hear the words “you have cancer.”

It wasn’t the greatest news to hear so early into my retirement, but life throws you things and you just have to deal with them.

For several weeks, I had a backache that wouldn’t go away. It just didn’t feel right. My wife is a nurse and suggested I get an X-ray that didn’t show anything abnormal.

After we got the X-ray, the doctor said, “Well, maybe you should get some blood work done.”

We got some blood work done and that blood work led to a referral to an oncologist.

The oncologist, after a bone marrow biopsy clearly showed that there were myeloma cells, gave me the diagnosis of multiple myeloma.

And all of a sudden you said, "Well, I didn't think this was ever gonna happen,” and then the next thing you know, it hits you that you have cancer.

We said, "Well, let's fight. Let's fight this.”

Over the last eight years, I’ve been on several treatments.

What we knew was that after each line of treatment, it got harder and harder to find a medicine that was going to work.

After a while, some medications stopped working.

The doctor recommended a medicine that had just been approved, ELREXFIO.

He told us ELREXFIO is a prescription medication used to treat adults with multiple myeloma who have received at least four treatment regimens and their cancer has come back, or did not respond to prior treatment.

We discussed the potential side effects and together we decided to move forward with the treatment.

During the first week, I received two smaller doses in the hospital to be monitored for serious side effects.

After completing these doses, I began receiving once-a-week treatments.

Two months later, I had blood work done, and my treatment was working. Several months after that, additional testing showed I was still responding to my treatment.

They did a bone marrow biopsy, and the bone marrow biopsy, he looks at me and says, "Well, you're MRD-negative," and I had never even considered that possibility in the past eight years.

MRD stands for "minimal residual disease." What essentially it means is that they cannot, according to their detecting abilities, find any myeloma cells in my body.

We were pretty shocked. I'm kind of still in shock.

If you've been dealing with something for eight years, it's almost, you know, impossible in a period of a short time.

This was the most remarkable thing I had ever come across.

I started with weekly injections and now after six months, I receive an injection every two weeks. There were some side effects to deal with, tiredness, loss of appetite, aches and pains.

It got better as things progressed. Please remember, this is all just my experience, and others could be different.

CHARLENE: We have a new lease, more hope. We can create new memories. We can spend time with our grandchildren, we can travel. This medicine has given us hope.

LOUIS: There are certain days in your life that you remember really well: the day you get married, the day your children are born.

When someone says, “You can’t detect the cancer anymore,” that’s a day that is a very powerful day.

We don’t know how long this is going to last. Where we are at this point is we’re planning traveling, seeing our kids. The idea is to make more memories and that’s what we’re going to do.