🌀Mood: Miraculous. Positioned. Grateful. Strategic. Steady

This week, I received words I will never forget.

“No active myelomatous disease.”

On my PET scan — the imaging that detects metabolically active cancer cells — nothing lit up.

No new lesions.
No active bone marrow infiltration.
No tumors outside the bone.

In medical language, this is called a Complete Metabolic Response (CMR).

In regular human language?

It means the cancer that once showed up aggressively in my body is no longer actively growing.

What This Really Means

This tells us something critical:

The last six months of treatment worked.

The induction therapy did what it was supposed to do — it dramatically lowered my tumor burden.

Only about 25% of patients achieve a negative PET scan at the six-month mark after induction therapy.

Twenty-five percent.

That stopped me in my tracks.

Because this isn’t just “good.”
It’s uncommon.
It’s significant.
It’s a blessing.

I see it as a miracle.

The Part Most People Don’t Understand

Here’s something my doctors were very clear about months ago:

Even if I reached zero active disease after six months, I could not stay on induction therapy indefinitely.

Those drugs are not designed to be taken forever at that intensity. They suppress the cancer, but they do not cure it.

If we stopped treatment after six months and did nothing else, the myeloma cells that remain — even at microscopic levels — would eventually begin multiplying again.

My numbers would rise.
My organs would become vulnerable.
And ultimately, the cancer would take my life.

That’s not dramatic. That’s the natural history of untreated multiple myeloma.

So this PET scan result doesn’t mean I’m “done.”

It means I’m ready for the next necessary step.

“So Why Are You Still Doing a Transplant?”

This is the question some people will naturally ask.

If there’s no active cancer right now, why go through a stem cell transplant?

Here’s why.

Multiple Myeloma is not considered cured just because it goes quiet on imaging.

There can still be microscopic cells hiding — cells too small to light up on a PET scan. If I stopped treatment now, those cells could begin multiplying again. The numbers could rise. The cancer could return aggressively and my organs would shut down, one-by-one.

We’ve seen what it does unchecked.

The transplant isn’t because treatment failed.

It’s because treatment worked.  It’s now a strategy.

Now that my tumor burden is extremely low — possibly as low as it has ever been — this is the ideal moment to “slam it down.”

The goal is five years — or more — before needing significant treatment again.

And how well someone responds to induction therapy is often very telling about how well they will respond to the transplant.

This clean PET scan is not the finish line.

It’s the green light.

The Biopsy and the Waiting

I also had my bone marrow biopsy this week.

Gustavo drove me — thankfully — because I was sedated. I remembered getting sick the last time, so I told the nurse ahead of time. She gave me medication for nausea before we even started.

It worked.

I came home. I ate. I slept peacefully for a couple of hours.

Small mercies matter.

We won’t have the biopsy results until tomorrow most likely. That test will tell us exactly what percentage of plasma cells remain in the marrow.

But regardless of that number, this PET scan result is extraordinary.

Miracle and Medicine

I want to say something carefully here.

I believe this is a miracle.

But I also believe miracles and medicine can coexist.

God works through brilliant doctors.
Through research.
Through chemotherapy.
Through statistics that shift in your favor.

Eighty percent to no active disease in six months.

That doesn’t make me naïve about what’s ahead.

High-dose chemo is still coming.
Hair loss is still coming.
Isolation is still coming.
Recovery is still coming.

But we are walking into transplant from a position of strength — not panic.

Strategy — not desperation.

And that changes everything.