![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneMy wife watched a video on the Immune Deficiency Foundation web site today, a doc was talking about, among other things, Covid and the antibody replacement treatment pools. Since my body doesn't produce antibodies, I do antibody replacement therapy. I infuse donated antibodies that go through a six month(!) purification process before they reach me, so what I'm receiving right now are approximately from mid-year 2021.
He was showing graphs from data from CSL Behring, Griffols, and other manufacturers of drugs used in primary immunedeficiency treatment, and the upshot is that LOTS of Covid antibodies are entering the donor pool, so in addition to being double-vaxxed and boosted, I'm now also getting Covid antibodies every week with my infusions! So that's pretty spiffy!
We also know that my body actually produced antibodies in reaction to my Moderna vaccination. My immunologist had a titer test run and the count was effectively greater than zero. There is no standard saying it must be greater than X to say that you are protected, the disease hasn't been around long enough to know what level really confers effective protection, so as long as it is a measurable number, they assume that you are protected.
So some spiffy news to start the weekend!
Of course, it will be several more months before Omicron antibodies start appearing in the pool, but that's the way it is. Meanwhile, just have to trust my vaccinations, keep my mask up, and stay careful.
The one problem, of course, is that monoclonal antibody treatment is pretty much ineffective against Omicron. They will re-jigger it and a new MCA will come out, but that will take some time to redo it and then get the production lines back up to volume, and then odds are that Florida will suck up most of the production. All they'd have to do is encourage vaccination and their consumption of MCAs would drop by half, but that would be admitting that vaccines work and the virus isn't a hoax.
Can't do that!
Russet is still in the twilight zone of trying to get connected with local doctors. The Rat Bastards LOST the records release form that she filled out in their office, and DIDN'T BOTHER CALLING TO TELL HER. The only reason she found out is she called THEM to find out if they'd received the records from her Las Cruces doctor!
Bastards.
So still in a holding pattern there.
It's not like it's life or death.
Oh, wait.
It is, kinda.
Increased risk of stroke from living at high altitude.
Yeah. Kind of important.
Bastards.
He was showing graphs from data from CSL Behring, Griffols, and other manufacturers of drugs used in primary immunedeficiency treatment, and the upshot is that LOTS of Covid antibodies are entering the donor pool, so in addition to being double-vaxxed and boosted, I'm now also getting Covid antibodies every week with my infusions! So that's pretty spiffy!
We also know that my body actually produced antibodies in reaction to my Moderna vaccination. My immunologist had a titer test run and the count was effectively greater than zero. There is no standard saying it must be greater than X to say that you are protected, the disease hasn't been around long enough to know what level really confers effective protection, so as long as it is a measurable number, they assume that you are protected.
So some spiffy news to start the weekend!
Of course, it will be several more months before Omicron antibodies start appearing in the pool, but that's the way it is. Meanwhile, just have to trust my vaccinations, keep my mask up, and stay careful.
The one problem, of course, is that monoclonal antibody treatment is pretty much ineffective against Omicron. They will re-jigger it and a new MCA will come out, but that will take some time to redo it and then get the production lines back up to volume, and then odds are that Florida will suck up most of the production. All they'd have to do is encourage vaccination and their consumption of MCAs would drop by half, but that would be admitting that vaccines work and the virus isn't a hoax.
Can't do that!
Russet is still in the twilight zone of trying to get connected with local doctors. The Rat Bastards LOST the records release form that she filled out in their office, and DIDN'T BOTHER CALLING TO TELL HER. The only reason she found out is she called THEM to find out if they'd received the records from her Las Cruces doctor!
Bastards.
So still in a holding pattern there.
It's not like it's life or death.
Oh, wait.
It is, kinda.
Increased risk of stroke from living at high altitude.
Yeah. Kind of important.
Bastards.
no subject
Date: 2022-01-29 02:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-29 11:27 am (UTC)Boo to paper mishandling.
no subject
Date: 2022-01-29 10:44 pm (UTC)Aigh at the doctors who lost all the information and didn't bother to tell you about it.
no subject
Date: 2022-01-30 06:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-30 07:41 pm (UTC)She has been diagnosed with something called Polycythemia Vera (PV), which is technically classified as a cancer. It's not an actual cancer in the sense of malformed cells rapidly multiplying, but there is an increased risk of it turning into leukemia later. The diagnostic clincher was a bone marrow aspiration that was done early December, we go the results back the week before we left for Christmas in Phoenix and it confirmed a genetic mutation that was a key signature in the diagnosis.
There's still some stuff to work through. It's definitely a myeloproliferative disorder, and there's a very slim chance that it's not PV and that it's a lesser form of polycythemia, but we're talking like less than a 5% chance. It's a weird blood thing where your body overproduces RBCs and makes 'em big. And living at high altitude causes your body to overproduce RBCs and make 'em big because of the lower oxygen levels. So it's likely that we'll have to eventually move to lower altitude and Russet might have to give up astronomy and move into a different field, or possibly a different specialization within astronomy. I wrote about it at some length a while back, but it's possible that coincided with Chris's death and you were more than a little preoccupied then. Russet's oncologist in Las Cruces wants her to set up with a local one for easier access, and we've been trying to since the first of the year and it's been nothing but Three Stooges, or so it seems. We got her an Apple Watch 7 on our way to Phoenix as it monitors blood oxygenation and an iPhone 13 Mini since her old iPhone doesn't work with the new Apple Watches, and it confirmed her night time oxygenation was dropping into the low 80s, so we're hoping that an oxygen concentrater, or CPAP, or eventually living at lower elevation will improve things for her. There are two main treatments for PV. One is a chemotherapy drug used for leukemia to literally destroy RBCs to reduce the count, the other is phlebotomy to literally draw out blood to reduce the count. There is some hope that a gene edit through CRISPR might be able to supply a cure in the future.