Treatment Day Three/Saturday

Easy day. Just one infusion of the Gazyva (GA-101), also known as Obinutuzumab or Gazyva.  Gazyva is actually the star of the clinical trial (not that a high dose of steroids is not interesting or fun, take it from someone who's slept an average of three hours the past two nights, I know).

Gazyva is what's known as a monoclonal antibody that is targeted to kill malignant B cells (which is pretty much the whole problem of CLL.  For those with scientific minds, the description is,

a third generation type II anti-CD20 antibody, selectivity binds to the extracellular domain of the human CD20 antigen on malignant human B cells. The Fc region carbohydrates of the antibody, enriched in bisected non-fucosylated glycosylation variants, contribute to its higher binding affinity for human FcgammaRIII receptors compared to non-glycoengineered antibodies, resulting in enhanced antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) and caspase-independent apoptosis. In addition, modification of elbow hinge sequences within the antibody variable framework regions may account for the strong apoptosis-inducing activity of R7159 upon binding to CD20 on target cells. (NCI Thesaurus)"

I've had no reactions so far and everything else in the six-month trial is pretty much repeating what we've done is the past three days so my hope (and relatively firm expectation) is that this will not be much more annoying than a few trips to San Diego.

Quite a few responses to the newly public blog so far.  Lots of encouragement, lots of people praying (no small thing that).  Some people being able apparently to benefit from the thinking here even if they aren't dealing directly with cancer (though some are dealing with cancer effects in its impacts on others)