Multiple myeloma is a cancer
where plasma cells grow out of proportion to the other
cells, and because of that, they can cause
different symptoms.
And that's how we diagnose it.
Some people come because
they're just tired, and a blood count shows
that things are abnormal.
So sometimes, patients
will come to us with a new fracture
or a new break in the bone somewhere
in their body, or the myeloma cells can also
produce proteins and cause you to have kidney failure.
So some people may
show up and say, I'm not going to the
bathroom anymore.
I don't know what happened.
And this can be a sign of
multiple myeloma as well.
Multiple myeloma
can be classified into different stages.
We tend to do it based on how
risky the myeloma is, and so in order to understand that, we
will always look at the myeloma cells most often in the bone
marrow and look at DNA changes.
Sometimes, the DNA
can be different because there are parts
of it that are missing, and this is what we call
a deletion of a DNA part.
And if that is true, that tends
to put people in a high risk.
There are other
changes you can have in DNA where two
pieces break off and mismatch with
another part, and that's what we call a translocation.
In the absence of
those all together, people would say that you
might have intermediate risk.
For example, if any one
of those is different, a different combination of
those changes, or perhaps an elevated blood
level of an LDH, or something called a
beta-2 microglobulin, may put someone either in a
high or in an intermediate risk.
And if none of
those are different, we would say that
you have low risk.
This is still considered
an incurable disease, but we want to make sure we
make people understand that it's a disease that you can live
with, not necessarily have to die of.
