Northern Lights: A Canadian Thanksgiving
Next Monday, October 14, we will be celebrating Thanksgiving Day here in Canada.
It is a time of family and friends getting together, sharing a meal, and enjoying each others’ company. It’s also a natural time to look back on the past year and to give thanks to the blessings we received throughout the year. And there is always much to give thanks for at harvest time.
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it focuses on the positives in our lives. I feel truly blessed and thankful to have a loving family and many friends who care about me. My cup runneth over!
This is my fifth Thanksgiving since my diagnosis in 2009, and each one has been better than the last. I can say that because the first year after my diagnosis was the worst. I had a lot of pain from bone fractures, and I underwent induction chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant within seven months. By the second Thanksgiving, I was receiving maintenance therapy. Since then I have not received any treatment for my myeloma, and my overall health has improved over the years. I am much stronger now, and I am feeling very well.
So from a health point of view, what will we be celebrating in our family this year?
We are grateful for an excellent health care system that is available for any of us when we need medical help. Throughout our lives, we have turned to this system for help with a myriad of health issues. My treatment for multiple myeloma is just one of the many instances of receiving help from the system.
We are also grateful for the modern drugs and treatments that have helped to turn myeloma into a more chronic condition. Even if one is not in a complete remission, one can now hope to thrive with the help of any of a number of drugs.
We are grateful for more sophisticated monitoring techniques for multiple myeloma. Detection of smaller and smaller amounts of cancer cells can help with decision making about treatments.
On a family level, I am grateful for the education system that has trained two doctors and a nurse in my immediate family: Both my husband and my younger daughter are doctors, and my older daughter is a registered nurse. All three work in clinics and hospitals here in Calgary. They have helped me out every day throughout my journey with multiple myeloma with their insights based on their medical training and experience. The conversation around our Thanksgiving dinner table will probably revolve around medicine, as usual.
From the viewpoint of my myeloma, we give thanks for all of the medical care that has brought me to this point in my life. When I look back, I know I received the care that helped me immensely in my recovery to date. Not only did I receive the latest treatments available here, but I also received – and continue to receive – expert and compassionate care from the medical staff at our cancer center. No matter what lies ahead, I have already had this precious time to spend with my family and friends and to enjoy life.
I also give thanks to the fact that I am well enough again to take on a ‘part-time volunteer job’ with the Southern Alberta Myeloma Patient Society. It has allowed me to make new friends with other patients and caregivers through our common interest in myeloma.
In addition, this job has given me the opportunity to advocate for access to multiple myeloma drugs in Canada. This topic is near and dear to my heart, because not all of the new myeloma drugs are available in Canada yet. Through my work, I hope to help in some small way to get drug access here.
We will be sitting down to a lovely feast with many friends and family members at our home on Monday. It will be a wonderful weekend, and it will be hard for me not to overindulge on turkey, salads, stuffing, and pumpkin pie.
Best wishes to all readers, and may you enjoy your Thanksgiving weekend too, whether it is in October or November. If you happen to live in a country with no specific date for a Thanksgiving holiday, just celebrate along with us!
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The quotation for this month is a Native American saying: "Give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way."
Nancy Shamanna is a multiple myeloma patient and a columnist at The Myeloma Beacon. You can view a list of her columns here.
If you are interested in writing a regular column to be published by The Myeloma Beacon, please contact the Beacon team at .
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Nancy, I too am thankful for all of that which you mention. I am now 7 years and counting and can not tell you how thankful I am for my family, doctors, caregivers, myeloma researchers, MMRF, IMF, and drug companies that work to provide us with the new treatments that will allow us to be one step ahead of myeloma. Also, the myeloma patient community of Canada should be thankful for you and all those who are working to get the newest drugs approved for use in Canada. Best Regards/Gary
Thanks Gary for your kind comments and your concern. That's it, isn't it, we take life one day, month or year at a time. Hopefully this will continue on for a long time and we can be posting on blogs and columns to exchange news and views!
In Canada, a drug company runs clinical trials here, and then applies for approval to Health Canada. If the new drug is approved, it proceeds to a Drug Price Review board. After that a new cancer drug can be reviewed by the Pan Cdn. Oncology Drug Review board (pCODR). This board gives recommendations to the provinces, which have jurisdiction over what cancer drugs will be approved in each province. There are steps in that process where patient advocacy groups may have input...at the national level, Myeloma Canada leads efforts in advocacy. At the provincial level, local support groups such as the one I am in (SAMPS) will lobby for drug approval. So it can be a time consuming process, but in the long run it's worth it. I was just in the middle of the stem cell transplant when Revlimid was approved here in Alberta (2010). I have benefitted from taking that drug, so I am very aware of what is available here and what is not!
Thanks to the editors of the Beacon for helping me with this column too. It's wonderful to have a wider platform on which to share information, and I always learn a lot from reading on this site too. I have a better overview of the myeloma drug availibilities than I might have otherwise.
Thanks,Nancy..as a fellow Canadian I always enjoy your columns.My husband recently relapsed 2 years out from his transplant and is starting Rev/Dex treatment.I do wonder how long it will be before he will have access here to the novel agents that now have FDA approval in the USA...hoping they'll be here for us when we need them but, as you say, things seem to move very slowly.Thanks for you advocacy work in that area.Happy Thanksgiving!!
Hi Sue, Thanksgiving greetings to you also.....I hope that your husband will do well on Rev/dex. Even if he has had it before, I think that the docs would start him on something like that. Watch for any notices from Myeloma Canada about advocacy. They will report on what we can do to help. I enjoy the advocacy work...makes me feel as if I am doing something useful with what I have learned to date, and it is actually pretty interesting too. Hopefully we will be getting pomalidomide approved in Canada soon. Also, there are clinical trials enrolling now for Kyprolis. Onyx, which has been sold to Amgen, will have a program in Canada soon. There may also be news on the 'biologicals', such as elotuzumab or daratumumab, soon. I think there have already been clinical trials for some biologicals. So it is looking up for us myeloma patients.
Hi Nancy! We in Eugene Oregon also celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving, and Columbus Day. My twin girls drove back from Canmore AB and Revelstoke BC, along with a dozen young women, who are celebrating Natalie's bachelorette party this weekend. She is getting married in Revelstoke 3 months from today. So there is much joy around, and I too am grateful to be able to celebrate another year (and 57th BD!). As the next article attests, our immune system is the key to our survival, and for me, a holistic approach for this challenge of MM is working best on that front. Acupuncture, energy work, meditation, curcumin, and a thymus extract are all enhancing my tolerability of Kyprolis, dex, Cytoxan and Zometa. So surrender, gratefulness and love in my life are helping enjoy life more than ever.
May all of us be thankful for our blessings!
Wow Jan! Congratulations to Natalie and the bachelorette party sounds like fun! I love the high spirits of youth...do you and they travel through Calgary often? You should send me a message if you are. Happy Birthday greetings to you also. You are still young...I look back on my fifties that way. Hoping that the K/d/C and zometa works well for you too.
I always enjoy reading your insightful posts. I looked at the recent article too and just hope that my immune system is getting stronger...difficult to know for sure, but I do walk a lot to try to keep fit right now. Helps to have an energetic young dog in one's life for getting one out walking!
The Beacon published a similar study about dendritic cells in 2012; URL to article: http://www.myelomabeacon.com/news/2012/08/30/immune-system-of-multiple-myeloma-patients-with-long-term-disease-control/
I found that to be really interesting that some patients' 'dendritic cells' were stronger than the norm!
Happy Thanksgiving, Nancy!!
I enjoyed your upbeat post. I love this time of year; it's like nature in its fullest maturity. We have so much to be grateful for just living in Canada. This will be my second Thanksgiving since my diagnosis. The first year was like a roller coaster with the shock of the diagnosis, chemo and an ASCT and back on chemo . Fear and uncertainty was always looming around me. This year is easier--good medical team, more understanding of myeloma and HOPE for more time with family and friends.
A huge blessing in our lives has been the friends we've met through our myeloma support group here in Calgary. Being proactive helps emotionally. I also find that keeping as informed as I can fights the anxiety.
Every day can be thanksgiving by having gratitude in all circumstances!!
Oh Sue! Thanks for posting. I have so enjoyed meeting you and your good spouse thru our steering committee here. It was nice to be on a 'patient panel' with you at our education seminar last month too. When you started quoting Scripture it just brought tears to my eyes..the only quote I could think of to respond was from 'Turn, Turn, Turn'...to every thing there is a season. Well, I guess that this is the season to give thanks and to enjoy family and friends before we head into the winter (festive) season. But right now the autumn leaves are in their splendour, the rivers are gleaming blue and it's a good day for walking. See you in November, I hope!