Hi. My name is Karen. I’m a myeloma patient, and this is my first column here at The Myeloma Beacon.

I’ve been a regular visitor to this site for a long time, and I’ve always enjoyed reading the columns written by other myeloma patients. I decided to share my own story when I realized I’ve become a myeloma old-timer.

I was diagnosed over seven years ago, when I was only 30 years old. So, I’m a myeloma youngster and an old-timer at the same time. At the time I was diagnosed, I would have given anything to hear from a myeloma old-timer – especially a youngster old-timer.

My story began in October 2005.

I went to the doctor for my annual physical, feeling perfectly fine. In fact, I had a five-month-old baby who had started sleeping through the night, so I felt great.

I gave the doctor some blood and forgot about it. With a new baby at home, I had other things on my mind.

A week later, a nurse called and said my protein level was too high.  All of you myeloma patients know exactly what came next.

After a month of doctor appointments, needles, bone marrow biopsies, x-rays, and 24-hour urine testing, the results were clear. It was the Big M – multiple myeloma.

For a myeloma patient, I must admit, I’ve been incredibly fortunate. My myeloma has never been aggressive and has always responded well to treatment.

A few weeks after my official diagnosis in Kansas City, my husband and I traveled to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for a second opinion. One doctor in Kansas City – not the one I see now – wanted me to have a transplant right away. My doctor at Mayo determined that the myeloma was smoldering, and I was able to delay treatment for 18 months as my monoclonal protein (M-spike) very slowly rose.

When I became anemic and my white blood cells dropped in March 2007, I started treatment with Revlimid ^[1] (lenalidomide) and dexamethasone ^[2] (Decadron).

I harvested stem cells at Mayo in November 2007 and collected enough cells for three transplants. Those cells are still on ice.

After two years on Revlimid, I was able to stop all treatment for over a year. Since the summer of 2010, I’ve been back on Revlimid (without the evil dexamethasone).

I am doing well. Very well. My chubby baby has grown into a tall, skinny eight-year-old, and I’m healthy enough to run half marathons and go to rock concerts and have a 99-percent-normal life.

But I couldn’t have seen this during the dark days after my diagnosis in 2005.

As soon as I knew the doctors suspected I had myeloma, I Googled it. And Googled it. And Googled it.

What I found on the Internet at that time was scary and cold and impersonal. I read all of the statistics that said I was going to die before my daughter started preschool. I read medical articles that I could barely understand, written by scientists who seemed to view myeloma patients as bundles of cancer cells, not as actual human beings. I got fed up with the scientists.

What was it like to actually live with myeloma every day? I was desperate to know.

I gradually started coming across blogs and personal stories, and I couldn’t get enough of them.  I read everything that I could: the ups, the downs, the treatments, the remissions, the relapses, and all of the life lived in between.

And I started to feel so much better. These were regular people, not bundles of cancer cells. They were living with a horrible disease, but they were still living. And a lot of the time, those lives were pretty good.

That’s why I think it’s important for all myeloma patients – young, old, smoldering, three-time transplant recipients, old-timers, newly diagnosed – to share our stories with each other.