Hi Sandra,
To add a photo, if you hover over your username in the top right corner it should bring up a menu with edit profile option for you to click on. In the profile tab of that there is an option to edit profile photo so if you wish you can upload a photo but many choose not to, so don’t worry if you don’t want to!
My dad is now 72 and was 62 when first diagnosed. It may be a little soon from the next consult based on what we were told to see any ‘real’ results but it will hopefully give you an indication.
The first time round all that was spoken about with us as markers was paraproteins and it was only when dad relapsed we started hearing the term light chains, so you are not alone. It is essentially another marker to monitor how MM is progressing. There is a really useful article on the News & Stories blog > ‘ask the nurse’ section of the site that explains paraproteins and light chains much better than I probably can:
“Antibodies are made up of two parts, heavy chains and light chains. When making antibodies, plasma cells normally make more light chains than required. These lights chains enter the blood as free light chains.
The light chains in antibodies come in two types – kappa (κ) and lambda (λ).
In people without myeloma, light chains are present in the blood, but the balance between kappa and lambda types (called the kappa to lambda ratio or free light chain ratio) will be fairly even.
In myeloma, the myeloma cells produce either kappa or lambda light chains only, so the level of that type will be higher, and the kappa to lambda ratio will change.
An abnormal ratio can indicate active myeloma and is considered to be as important as the kappa and lambda levels for diagnosing and monitoring myeloma.
Therefore, as myeloma cells produce the paraprotein they also produce excess amounts of one type of light chain.”
Full blog article: https://www.myeloma.org.uk/news/ask-the-nurse-paraproteins-and-free-light-chains/
Hope this helps x
