I started the BATCC clinical trial on ruxolitinib on June 17, 2016. It was a two year trial designed test the effectiveness of ruxolitinib on alleviating the symptoms of CLL (fatigue, bone pain, joint pain, and others) by targeting cells that carried the JAK-7 enzyme, which produces inflammation. Inflammation is the source of many diseases…
I once got a bad case of Redbugs (chiggers) Well, I under-reported that significantly. I’ve gotten a bad case of them more than once. I’ve gotten them dozens of times, sometimes from head to toe, with thriving colonies in tender places, growing like new subdivisions in good, suburban school districts, the Redbugs looking for favorable…
No. It’s not really summer, yet, but today sure seemed like it. Summers seem harsher here than they used to be. Maybe my tolerance is faltering. Lots of things at my age are faltering. I am glad to be still be here. We have been working long hours in Olive Branch, Mississippi, in the throes…
I have been on the Ruxolitinib trial for two years now. It has been good so far. The trial was designed to address the symptoms of CLL and prove, disprove, or measure its efficacy in individual patients. The requirements of the trial were that each person enrolled must not be treatment naive, meaning that they…
It was just a simple Facebook post about being in Houston for my two month checkup. It was followed by a message from Tennessee’s husband, Sam. “We are here and would like to meet up if we can,” Sam wrote. That stopped me in my tracks. Tennessee and Sam and I have been Facebook friends…
Debbie and I made a trip to Houston on Sunday. I had an appointment at BATCC for my two month checkup for the Ruxolitinib clinical trial I am on. For a while we were making the trip every two weeks, but now, we have settled into two month, which is a lot better. Over the…
That’s what I wanted: to write something profound. Profundity as a goal is elusive, though it can overtake us unawares from time to time, which is probably the best sort of profundity: the unplanned. We all have it from time to time, and we mostly lack it when we are setting out to be profound.…
Dr. Gooday, Nurse Alice, Nurse Sarah and crew at BATCC were all about like I expected them. BATCC seems to get along just fine, though I am not there every day to see its inefficiencies, nor the frustrations of its employees. I, on the other hand, am very familiar with my own frustrations, and today…
This past week had the Super Moon phenomenon. It was the closest the moon has been to the earth since 1948, nearly 20,000 miles closer than normal. I had super pains, too. I have definitely seen a correlation between the full moon and hyper-CLL symptoms, and the week leading up to the super moon and…
Tonight is the new moon. I was expecting maximum waned symptoms from the minimum visible moon. That has not happened. Now I am thinking that the symptoms still wax and wane on a lunar cycle, with maximum symptoms at the moon’s separate zeniths of full or new. I expect in a week, I’ll have a…
Mississippi Chris Sharp CLL Blog 