No two ways about it. I wasn’t smiling.

You’d think that, after having endured the kind of challenges that we multiple myeloma patients face during our illnesses, I would have learned not to sweat the little inconveniences that life seems to relish throwing my way.

You’d think that, but I can recall an out-of-state trip for a myeloma checkup five years ago during which I greatly overestimated my ability to ‘go with the flow.’

On the busy first day of …

I was in line at the UPS Store waiting to send a sample of blood to my out-of-state myeloma doctors when an impatient man behind me muttered, "C’mon, don’t you know that our days are numbered?"

A shiver went down my spine hearing him speak the odd phrase that I’d heard three other times in the previous 24 hours. In fact, "our days are numbered" was starting to echo in my brain.

Do you know what it’s like when some …

A hard-as-nails buddy once asked me: ‘How can you be so brave going through this myeloma crud?’

I’m brave? Not hardly. He wasn’t there on this day:

It was in the spring six years ago that I was having trouble getting com­fort­able in the well-worn recliner in the tiny one-bedroom apartment that I had rented in Little Rock.

As I leaned over to grab something off of an end table, I felt a ‘crunch’ in my side. I moaned and …

During a recent multiple myeloma check-up, I was relaxing on the sliding table of a PET scan machine undergoing – surprise surprise – a PET scan.

My oncologist had insisted that it was time for a scan, the clinic happened to have a machine available, and my insurance company was in such a good mood that they had agreed to cover the charges.

Far be it from me to argue, a-PET-scanning I did go!

While not quite as cheery as …

‘Why do you call it the bacon, Daddy?’ five-year-old Lizzie asked as she wheedled her way onto my lap against my mock protests back in the summer of 2010.

At the very mention of ‘bacon’, arguably one of the English language’s most enchanting words, I entered into an almost Manchurian-candidate-meets-Pavlov’s-dog-like trance:

‘Bacon? What bacon? There’s bacon?’

‘You know, that bacon thingy you’re doing that Mommy says I shouldn’t bother you ‘cause of.’

I had to laugh because Lizzie’s interpretation of …

I was still a bit drowsy when I arrived at the hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas, for my recent mid-January, 6:30 a.m. PET scan appointment. As an inveterate night owl, I was less than thrilled about having to beat the sun out of bed and the early bird to the worm, but, nonetheless, I was up-and-at-‘em-Atom-Ant, ready to face the typically long first day of a myeloma check-up.

A text from my school-age daughters and elementary principal wife back home …

My wife has been known to lovingly say this about me: “If Sean isn’t any­thing else, at least he’s consistent. For the most part, that is. Some­times.”

While I blush at her glowing praise, I have come to the conclusion that consistency isn’t always such a good thing. Case in point:

I have been wrestling back and forth with multiple myeloma for over six years now and have somehow managed to consistently infuse bouts of either bronchitis or pneumonia into …