As this year’s Mother’s Day drew near, my thoughts turned to­ward the two ‘mothers’ who have had a major influence on the way I have ap­proached my battle with multiple myeloma: my mother, Eva, and the mother of my chil­dren, Karen.

After years of dealing with an array of perplexing symp­toms initially, and incorrectly, attributed to arthritis, my mom, while in her mid 40s, was diag­nosed with multiple sclerosis. We myeloma patients know all about tricky diagnoses.

In a matter of a few short years, multiple sclerosis, an auto­immune disease that affects the spinal cord and brain, transformed my mother from a bright, active, energetic woman in the prime of her life, into a whisper of herself, incapacitated and totally bedridden. It was dev­as­tat­ing to see her razor-sharp mind being trapped in a body that in­creas­ingly betrayed her.

Through her arduous struggle, I was privileged to witness the strength and depth of my mother’s amazing spirit as she faced one medical chal­lenge after another. She showed me how not to fall prey to self pity and how to live with joy and hope and humor, even within the bleakest of cir­cum­stances. I have no doubt that she was afraid as her disease progressed, but my mom would not allow herself to be ruled by fear.

Near the end of her life, communicating only through measured blinks and tiny smiles, she was still able to tell me how much she loved me. And that was enough for us. At fifty-five, she died much too young. I was in my twenties.

My father, a career member of the U.S. Air Force, took an early retirement to become my mother’s fulltime care­giver. In a storybook scenario, even though my parents had separated years before, my dad selflessly answered my mother’s call for help and set about to take care of the woman for whom he had fallen thirty years earlier. My dad learned to become a skilled, confident advocate for my mother, one day at a time.

I saw love and compassion in everything he did for her. He, like most devoted care­givers, was a hero. A dozen years after my mom left us, my dad succumbed after a brief battle with cancer. My brothers and I cared for him through his last months.

Little did I know that my parents’ courageous example of dealing with adversity would affect me in more profound ways than I could have imagined.

Fast forward twenty years and in one of life’s curious twists, I was diag­nosed in my forties with my very own life-threatening illness. Of the many things about my mom that I would have gladly emulated, taking on a strange disease wasn’t one of them!

But my personal nemesis would not be multiple sclerosis, my mother's foe. It would be multiple myeloma that pointed its ominous finger at me.

In the nearly three years that I have been sparring with multiple myeloma, I have endured rounds of high-dose chemo­ther­apy, stem cell trans­plants, vertebral surgeries, broken bones, nausea, profound anemia, and more of the litany of tests, treat­ments, and troubles that we myeloma patients undergo. I am nearly halfway through a three-year cycle of weekly main­te­nance ther­apy designed to keep battering away at any hidden cancer I might be harboring. I am grateful to be in remission.

I recog­nize that I have been blessed with excellent health care, a committed medical team, and a dedicated group of care­givers, led by my wife, Karen.

Even in the middle of a dizzyingly paced life as a mother to our two daughters, an elementary school music teacher, com­munity and church volunteer, and graduate student, Karen so thoroughly championed my cause that one of my doctors joked that with my ‘sickeningly’ pos­i­tive outlook and Karen’s dogged attention to treat­ment details, myeloma is just going to get tired of dealing with us and skulk away. From his lips to God’s ears!

Karen has helped me navigate through the un­fore­seen quirks of living with myeloma. She is as quick with a smile and a laugh as she is with a hug to allay my frustration when things aren’t so easy. She isn’t afraid to admonish me to take my pills, eat more vegetables, and stop blaming Mr. Dex for my irascible behavior. There is no such thing as playing the cancer card with her. She’s one tough cookie!

Through all of the madness of myeloma, Karen has helped our family to main­tain our bal­ance and to keep moving forward as lovingly and faithfully as is possible.

I am fortunate that Karen is cut from the same care­giver cloth as my father was. I couldn’t be in better hands.

And if I can be half as brave and half as resilient as my mother was during her lifetime, I will make it through my days with myeloma with dignity, no matter the out­come.

Thank you, Mom, and thank you, Karen. Happy Mother’s Day!

And thank you to all of those incredibly dedicated care­givers out across Myelomaville!