UAMS Institute brings hope to myeloma patients (UALR Public Radio) - The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, unbeknownst to many, is home to a medical treasure: The Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy. Every year thousands of people come to Little Rock from far away to be treated for multiple myeloma, a type of cancer of the blood.

Ask patients and staffers about the Institute, and it quickly becomes clear they're talking less about a center than about a certain person - founding doctor Bart Barlogie.

Virginia Roda is from Spain. She was a little taken aback the first time she saw him. "I think, oh, this is my doctor? [He wore] jeans, and leather, and boots, and T-shirt. I was surprised," she said.

Barlogie is known for driving a motorcycle to work. But Barlogie had something else to offer: a possible reprieve from the death sentence Roda was facing from her disease. "When I arrived, Barlogie said to me, you are young, and I can cure you," Roda related. "So I smiled and said you are my doctor. Forever."

Barlogie keeps his staff busy, and everyone agrees his single-mindedness has made this center a world leader. Barlogie is challenging the common notion that this disease of plasma cells in the blood is always fatal.

"We really had a different philosophy from the outset than anybody else in the country. And that was that our goal was to cure the patient, although this hadn't been previously accomplished," Barlogie said.

Barlogie claims he's on the verge of declaring that victory. When the Institute was founded in 1989, the median survival of multiple myeloma patients was only about two to three years. Now it's about four years nationwide, but at the U-A-M-S Institute, it's closer to eight or nine years. Some patients are still around from the Institute's founding twenty years ago.

Betty Jo Alvey was diagnosed in 1999, and she says she's seen the difference. "If I had had a video camera, I'd have loved to have taken videos of how ill people were in the waiting room. Everybody was just at death's door. And now, people are up and about, and smiling and talking. And it's because of research," Alvey said.

Multiple myeloma sulks quietly in the blood until it eventually attacks the bones and kidney. Alvey's first symptom came after a workout with a friend.

"We got through and she said - she called me B.J. - she said, 'B.J., you're limping," Alvey recalled. "And I was real embarrassed and I said 'Oh, no, I've just got a catch in my hip."

That catch in her hipbone never went away, and Alvey started losing weight so fast she had to get smaller pants every two weeks. The eventual diagnosis was frightening. "The doctor at home told me that they could either call in hospice, or I could come to Little Rock."

At U-A-M-S, genetic profiles help calibrate a person's treatment. There are actually eight different types of multiple myeloma, some a lot more aggressive than others. The goal is to do enough to keep the condition at bay, but avoid causing other problems. No pie-in-the-sky experimental therapies here - just massive amounts of detailed data put to work. Doctors here use every arrow in their quiver to fight the cancer.

But to Alvey, it's Doctor Barlogie himself who makes the difference. "He's a doctor full of passion, and love... dedication. You just see it, you know it," Alvey said.

A stem cell transplant is an aggressive measure to halt the cancer's progression. Alvey is on her fourth.

"One of my goals when I was first diagnosed is that I would live long enough that my son would know who I was. Because he was only four and a half," Alvey said. Her son is now fifteen years old; she also has a grandchild by one of her daughters.



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