Saturday, June 14, 2008

Kelly Cox Speaks in Twin Cities

Kelly Cox, Director of Support Groups Outreach for the International Myeloma Foundation (IMF), spoke to both Twin Cities support groups last week. With web data and computer-generated slides he gave us a lot of information about our disease and good advice about dealing with it. A few points:
  • The IMF is doubling the number of people available to answer the hot line, from two to four.
  • Kelly would like to have a Patient and Family Seminar in the Twin Cities in spring or summer 2009 and will try to arrange it.
  • Kelly showed slides of a study about the Mediterranean Diet which stratified people's level of compliance on a scale of 1 to 10 and demonstrated that every two-point increase in compliance results in 33% fewer deaths from heart disease and 24% fewer from cancer.
  • Approximately 2200 people are newly diagnosed with myeloma in the USA each month (26,400 per year).
  • Three different organizations are organized to specifically serve the community of myeloma patients:The organizations operate in somewhat different ways, and each serves a purpose. One specific focus of the IMF is support of local patient-support groups, as evidenced by Kelly's presence last week at two of Minnesota's three group meetings. Another focus is direct support of individual patients, through the hot line and in other ways. A third is reaearch - the IMF has been heavily involved in the Bank on a Cure project and many, many others.
Upcoming meeting dates:
  • St. Paul: Wednesday, July 16, 1:00 pm. See the sidebar for more information.
  • Minneapolis: Saturday, July 19, 10:00 am. See the sidebar for more.
  • Rochester: Saturday, June 21, 10:00 am. See the sidebar for more.
Both Twin Cities meetings included new first-time attendees last week. We would love to see you there.

Monday, June 2, 2008

Good News from ASCO

The International Myeloma Foundation (IMF) has posted a news article announcing findings presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) last week indicating that "novel" treatment options such as Revlimid and Velcade have significantly improved patients' survival. In particular:
  • Two-year survival has increased to 93% for newly-diagnosed patients. The survival rate for people without myeloma is only three percent higher,

  • Velcade has produced a high complete-response (CR) rate, and

  • Further improvements are made by using Revlimid and Velcade in sequence or in combination.
The IMF believes that we are coming closer to making myeloma a chronic disease instead of a fatal one.

Stick around, it's getting better and better!