This past May, I was traveling on a flight from Calgary to Victoria, British Columbia, to attend a seminar in needle arts, which is a passion in my life.  I have been taking classes and doing projects in embroidery since 2001.

The flight was delayed. When we finally boarded, I and all the other passengers found that the aircraft had been switched from a jet plane to a Dash-8, a smaller propeller-type plane.  My seat assignment was still the same …

This spring, my choir is performing a tribute concert to Queen Elizabeth II for her Diamond Jubilee.  Thus, many of the songs we sing originate in the U.K.  One song by the Beatles, which has a rollicking beat, barbershop in nature, is called ‘When I’m Sixty-Four.’

During one of our recent rehearsals, I suddenly realized that the first line of the song...’When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now…,’ had already applied to me.  I had already …

Could I handle dex?  Would I ever be standing tall again without pain?   Could such a new drug as Velcade restore my bone marrow to health?  How about the side effects?

These were the unanswered questions of my universe in the early autumn of 2009.

During that time, my family and I all became very familiar with the cancer center.  Lovely artwork, all donated or on loan, brightened the walls of the hallways.  Volunteers served tea in bone china teacups …

In mid-August 2009, I received the diagnosis that I had been dreading and hoping against hope was not true: multiple myeloma.  I realized later that if my diagnosis had been put off much longer, I could have been much worse off, but at the time, it was still very upsetting. 

My husband Dilip and I started to digest a whole lot of information about multiple myeloma.  I felt like I was in a crash course of cancer education; we went …

You may remember from my first column the strange events going on with me in the spring of 2009 that culminated in a bad fall and back injuries in July of the same year.

We got X-rays taken after the fall that showed four vertebral fractures, one in the upper and three in the lower back. Probably the worst one was from the fall. All were compression fractures, which are seen in cases of osteoporosis. That was the diagnosis …

“Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.”
– Max Ehrmann, Desiderata.

I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in July of 2009 at the age of 58. In hindsight, I should have known that a misfortune was developing because things started to change earlier that year.

The spring of 2009 was a late, cold one here in Calgary. Snow storms buffeted us almost weekly into May. Most outdoor exercise seemed to include snow shoveling and walking with snow …