Tony Hollingshead Tony's Journey

In Oct. 2016 Tony went in for a routine physical and his urine had a slight amount of blood in it. They sent him to the urologist to check for kidney stones as he has had a history of kidney stones in the past. They did a CT scan and found a very small kidney stone but more importantly they found what they thought was some kind of tumor on his spine. He was then referred to the neurologist for MRI. The tumor has eaten away at his L2 so much that it was as thin as a piece of paper the doctor told us. They did a biopsy of the tumor in Dec and found it was a form of cancer called a solitary plasmacytoma . The neuorolgist then referred him to the cancer center for radiation treatments, and the oncologist wanted to do a bone marrow biopsy to see if it had progressed to Multiple Myeloma (MM). As many of you know Tony was diagnosed with MM on Feb 2nd, 2017. MM is the 2nd most common blood cancer that affects the bone marrow and is a terminal incurable disease. He went through 16 rounds of radiation, started a chemo medication and was put on a clinical trial in Feb. He was responding very well to the clinical trial but in June he was taken off of the trial due to the drug he was on causing death in patients who have MM. He then was placed on a new medication which requires weekly stomach injections. Without medication or any kind of treatment the disease causes tumors on the spine, ribs, long bones and eventually cause death. Since Feb we have spent many days at the Mayo clinic in Rochester and he has been put on a multitude of different drugs. Oct 13th he will start his stem cell transplant (SCT) in which we will be in Rochester for up to 6 weeks. I will post updates on here as we go through the process.