After my last column, in which I described how I recently felt strong enough to try practicing yoga, I realized that there have been many changes in my life since my myeloma diagnosis four years ago.

Although no one would want to be handed a diagnosis of any kind of cancer, including multiple myeloma, I managed to scrape through the tough times. Now I have emerged onto a clear plateau of being in a remission, and I no longer need to take any chemotherapy drugs.

Now that I can look out and around, forward and backwards in time, I realize that my ‘new normal’ is quite good actually.

With luck on our side, we do continue to get older. The years roll by, and whatever has been happening in our lives gradually shifts and changes to accommodate us as we age.

But with a myeloma diagnosis and the accompanying injuries, a whole lot of ‘aging’ can happen in a really short period of time. Someone who posted recently on The Beacon mentioned that she was afraid that she would not outlive her cat.

There is nothing so stark and compelling as a diagnosis of a life-threatening condition, and it can stop us short in our tracks. We have ‘hit the wall’ and have immediately to start dealing with a condition that, left unchecked, will overwhelm our health, making normal aging impossible to achieve.

My myeloma diagnosis four years ago left me changed in some subtle and not so subtle ways.

I am obviously not as physically strong as I once was. I can no longer lift heavy items, march in parades with the pipe band, or even go jogging, without incurring so much pain that I need to take pain meds. If I fall, it hurts a lot, too. So I try to avoid situations that cause me pain.

The anxiety and fear that welled up in me at the time of the diagnosis was almost overwhelming. The ex­haustion, sickness, and pain at that time and during treatment were truly depressing. The whole experi­ence made me worry about the results of every blood test, bone marrow biopsy, or skeletal X-ray survey. But now, four years from the start of the testing, I worry a lot less about the myeloma returning anytime soon. There is no sign of it in my blood tests, and if my numbers started to rise, I would probably have some time to think of treatment options. It might not be as much of an emergency situation as it was initially.

Certainly I can no longer keep pace with the younger person I once was. One would expect to slow down a bit with every decade of life. But the rough and tumble world of cancer and its treatments tends to cause a lot of disruption in one’s normal routines.

My energy levels now are not as good as they were four or five years ago. However, they are much better than they were when undergoing treatment.

Since my treatments ended, I have gotten back on my feet and can walk longish distances again. It is a real pleasure. I now meet regularly with three retired teacher friends. We walk 5 km and go for coffee each Friday morning. Additionally, last summer I started to do longer hikes in the mountains and hope to do more of those too. My husband Dilip and I even took up snowshoeing last winter. We realized that it is more stable to walk on snowshoes than to ski, in terms of avoiding falls. And I am trying out yoga too.

Luckily I can pace myself, slow down, and even take ‘cat naps’ if I need to do so.

Despite the changes that put some limitations on me, some positive changes have also occurred since my diagnosis.

Overall, I feel much healthier now than before my diagnosis. I have also noticed that I am not as prone to catching infections anymore. Since I was immuno-compromised for quite a while, I started to avoid situations where I might be around sick people. I would turn away from someone who was coughing or sneezing. As a result, I do not get sick as often as I did previously.

Beyond my physical health, other positive changes have also occurred in my daily life.

My creative side is flourishing more now than before my diagnosis. I think that the tough experiences of the cancer treatments made me want to seek out the beautiful in life.

As a result, I have become more involved with the needlework guild I joined in 2001. The guild recently awarded me a grant to attend a seminar in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in May. In return, I will teach a class in silk ribbon embroidery locally and write an article for our newsletter.

My life as a choir singer has also taken on fresh energies. Besides singing in the choir, I am now on the music selection committee for the choir. In addition, I started to take voice lessons last year, since I love to sing and it seemed a nice healthy initiative.

I have also taken up photography. We have a lot of wildlife in our area, even as close as our own backyard. Photographing a coyote and a bobcat in March in our backyard led me to posting a picture of the bobcat in our community newsletter. Now the parks group I have been in since 1992 is planning to do a project about the wildlife in our park, maybe a photo contest, or an online book.

The most interesting and relevant change in terms of myeloma is that I have taken on a new ‘cause:’ helping us myeloma patients to navigate through the rough waters of our experiences.

It started when I my attended a patient education conference in 2009, only two months after my diagnosis. The conference was organized by our local and national support groups. After meeting the charming and highly motivated people involved with it, I decided to join them.

Since then, I have had the opportunity to help to plan and volunteer at a number of events, including two patient conferences and our local, annual run/walk to raise funds for myeloma research.

I really have evolved from being a passive listener to being an active planner.

On a broader level, I started writing this column for The Myeloma Beacon early last year with the hopes that sharing my experiences would be helpful to other patients during their struggles with this disease. Writing this column has also been wonderful for my self confidence.

So, overall, life is good again. Even if I have lost some strength and tend to worry a bit sometimes, the wonders in my seventh decade are more than enough to compensate for that.

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The quotation for this month is from Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), American theologian, ethicist and public intellectual, who wrote "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." (Also known as the Serenity Prayer)