Some of my experiences at work lately have reminded me of certain aspects of life as a multiple myeloma survivor. In both cases, decisions that can have major re­per­cussions must be made, sometimes on short notice, based on information that is at best sketchy, and at worst contra­dictory or misleading. While the details of the two cases are totally dif­fer­ent, the same sort of conundrum arises in both cases.

In multiple myeloma, a key decision that many patients face periodically …

About a year ago, fellow Beacon columnist Andrew Gordon men­tioned in one of his columns how other­wise rational, fact-based people can be a bit super­sti­tious. This defi­nitely struck a chord with me as a rational engineer who is a bit super­sti­tious.

Basically, I have tended for years to have little things that I do “for luck.” For instance, I tend not to immediately open important letters or emails, for example those containing blood test results. This is obviously …

A few months ago, I wrote a column about taking the cortico­steroid dexa­metha­sone (Decadron). I took dex most days for eight months after I was first diag­nosed with myeloma in 2006, and have been taking it, be­tween one and three times a month, for the past two years.

I figured that this ex­peri­ence would mean that I didn’t have any­thing new to learn about taking dex, but this turned out not to be the case. Instead, the feedback …

We are now in the centenary of the Battle of the Somme, one of the largest battles of the First World War fought by the armies of the British and French empires against the German Empire.

For that reason, I have been re-reading Somme: The Heroism and Horror of War by Martin Gilbert. It is striking how many men who became well known in later life served at the Somme, for instance J. R. R. Tolkien and the …

As multiple myeloma patients, we rapidly become familiar with many concepts from probability and statistics. There are measures such as the probability of a given treatment leading to a complete response, the probability of that treatment producing undesirable side effects, and of course numbers like median progression-free survival and median overall survival.

It can sometimes be difficult to remember that statistical measures such as these usually only apply to an entire population, not to any single indi­vidual. They are therefore …

I am about as far as anyone can be from being an expert on trees, which may make the title of this column a bit perplexing. I can tell big trees from small ones, ever­greens from deciduous, and can even identify mag­no­lias, dogwoods, and (on a good day) maples and oaks. But that’s about as far as my expertise goes.

Rockets are a different matter: I am always baffled when a film uses video of the wrong type of rocket. …

The world may not be ready for the 500th column on the joys of dexa­meth­a­sone (Decadron), but today is a dex day for me, so here it goes anyway.

I have a fair bit of experience with the corticosteroid dex, starting with my myeloma diagnosis back in 2006. My initial treatment consisted of thalido­mide (Thalomid) and dex, and I was on the two drugs for about eight months. This combination did well, getting me into complete re­mission before …