[Beacon Staff]

Weekly Poll - Consultation With Smoldering Myeloma Expert

by Beacon Staff on Wed Aug 29, 2012 11:27 am

This week's poll is about whether you have consulted with a smoldering or multiple myeloma expert about your smoldering myeloma diagnosis.

A few clarifications:

First, this question is only for readers (and their caregivers) who have smoldering or asymptomatic myeloma. That is, not MGUS or symptomatic multiple myeloma. We are also running a second poll this week asking the same question of MGUS patients, and we have previously run a similar poll for symptomatic myeloma patients (links are at the end of this post).

Second, if you are a caregiver or family member of a smoldering myeloma patient, feel free to answer on their behalf.

Third, by "smoldering or multiple myeloma expert," we are referring to hematologist/oncologists who specialize in smoldering myeloma and symptomatic multiple myeloma and see many of these types of patients at a given time. Please do not count general oncologists or hematologist/oncologists who treat mostly other types of cancer.

Fourth, you can count any smoldering/symptomatic myeloma expert whom you see regularly to review lab work, track your progress, or discuss treatment options, or whom you consulted with during one or more private in-person or by-phone meetings in which they reviewed your medical history/records and gave you an informed opinion about if, when, where, or how to manage your smoldering myeloma. Please do not count smoldering/myeloma experts you may have communicated with briefly in a public manner (e.g., during a Q&A session of a teleconference call) or without them having access to your medical records (e.g. a brief email exchange or these forums).

As always, feel free to post comments, thoughts, or feedback in the space below. They can be very useful to other readers. For instance, why have you chosen to consult or not consult with a smoldering/myeloma expert?

As mentioned above, we're running two polls this week. Here's a link to the same poll open to monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined (MGUS) patients:
https://myelomabeacon.org/forum/weekly-poll-consultation-with-mgus-myeloma-expert-t1284.html

For those who are interested, we ran a similar poll a while back asking active myeloma patients how many myeloma experts they had consulted with about if, when, where, and how to treat their multiple myeloma:
https://myelomabeacon.org/forum/weekly-poll-consultation-with-myeloma-experts-t1071.html