[StandingTall]

What pulled the trigger?

by StandingTall on Sat Nov 30, 2013 1:38 pm

I know that the big question we have all asked is, "How did I get lucky enough to get multiple myeloma?" My doctors asked, especially since my sister died at 36 from metastastized breast cancer, "Where do you grow up?" Southern California/Northern California. Navy Base in the Bay Area...Mare Island...built way back in the day...and who knows what stuff I crawled in over there. My first job, I worked at a small vet clinic...and doc had an old imaging x-ray...which i had to throw an apron on when he activated it...and I would help develop the images old-school style in the chemicals...but not all that often...and I only worked there 6 mos. Anyway, that comes to mind.

But really what I am talking about is when multiple myeloma decided to go from dormancy into symptomatic multiple myeloma. I really went downhill fast this summer. I swam hard laps in the pool, I worked fast at work in my hotel...very physical job. But it also was a very stressful time in my life...lots of personal and financial woes just eating away at me...I really don't want to get into them, but man, I really have been bearing the weight of some major difficult stuff for the last 3 years...but I also overcame them, being positive, anchoring myself to God, moving ahead...as best I could going one day at a time. In fact, things really turned a positive corner all-around, just as my physical state was getting at its worse...and worse...and worse. So I wonder if all that stress I put myself through was the trigger for making my multiple myeloma active...not really knowing how long it has been lying in weight?

Anybody else attribute theirs to stress?

[Waldopepper]

Re: What pulled the trigger?

by Waldopepper on Sat Nov 30, 2013 7:04 pm

Hadn't considered stress as a trigger, I was diagnosed in October. For quite some time I stressed / worried about my nephew in Iraq and then Afghanistan, politics, the stock market. Always had good numbers at regular physicals, healthy, active, non smoking and then shazam, multiple myeloma found while looking for pneumonia. I also had agent orange exposure many years ago, so maybe a combo, who knows .