I don’t get headaches very often, but the one I was nurs­ing while curled up in a chair in the waiting room of the bone mar­row clinic was a doozy. I pulled my favorite St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap down over my eyes to shutter out the bright overhead lights.

Normally I enjoy the friendly ‘Who’s your doctor?’ and ‘Where’re y’all from?’ back-and-forth banter often heard in such gathering places, but until it was my turn up at bat in the bone marrow suite, I opted to tune out from the world around me.

No offense intended, world around me.

Although I was grateful when the room abruptly fell silent, curiosity got the better of me and I slowly raised my ball cap to see what had interrupted the conversations.

What I spied was a petite woman walking into the room followed by a rather imposing gentleman. By "im­pos­ing," I mean that he looked like he belonged on a professional football field chasing quarterbacks more than he did rubbing elbows with sick people like yours truly.

When the duo stopped directly in front of me, I realized that I was parked in between the only two available empty seats - so I obligingly moved over lest he sit on me.

I’ll admit that I secretly hoped that the petite woman would choose the chair closest to me. Otherwise, the big fellow would have taken up half of my space, too. I even wondered if perhaps they could remove one of the chairs so that she could just sit directly on his lap. Voila! Plenty of room for everyone!

I sure hoped that I hadn’t made that kooky suggestion out loud. Headaches and extra pain meds and not eating because there’s a PET scan scheduled directly after the bone biopsy sometimes make rationality and reserve fly out of the window.

No offense intended big man, but I was glad when the petite woman sat next to me.

As the man eased and squeezed himself into the padded chair, a technician placed a rolled up towel behind his lower back to cushion the spot on his hip where, I cleverly assumed, he’d just had a biopsy performed.

It was obvious that the guy was in some physical discomfort, but it was the look in his eyes, and in his com­pan­ion’s eyes, that belied something even more daunting than pain.

They were afraid. You could feel it radiate from them.

Without any prompting, the petite woman, her voice breaking, began sharing that doctors suspected that her husband had a rare cancer called multiple myeloma and that they were going through some horrible testing to confirm the docs’ suspicions.

What she didn’t realize was that she was preaching to the myeloma choir. It was hard to see the couple in such obvious distress.  There was certainly no misery-loves-company sentiment afoot, for we genuinely empathized with them. We had felt that same fear and pain once upon a time.

A woman across from us spoke in a lilting southern drawl ‘Things will work out, honey. Just try to stay pos­i­tive.’

Another patient grumbled ‘I don’t agree with that! Being positive has absolutely nothing to do with beating myeloma!’  His wife blurted out ‘It has everything to do with beating it – you should try it for a change!’

Still another elderly caregiver dated herself by interjecting ‘You should read the book, The Power of Positive Thinking.’

Oh, no!  It was happening. They were using the P-word. They played the P-card. The P-bomb had been dropped.

While some folks appreciate being advised to ‘stay positive,’ I have seen others blow a gasket, their emo­tions bubbling over as they think, or say, or scream, ‘How do you expect us to be positive in the middle of something like this?’

Somehow the focus drifted to me just like the time when the Waiting Room Philosophy Club heatedly de­bated the possibility of living a ‘happy’ life with myeloma.   It wasn’t pretty.

Great, I still had a headache and I kind of wished that my name would come up to report post haste to the biopsy chamber, but without such relief, I took a stab.

Measuring my words carefully, I proceeded to ‘out’ myself as a practitioner of positive attitudes and positive thinking, but not in the way that most people would suspect.

I said that this is what I think about having a positive attitude:

I am not at all positive that I will be cured or live long. I have no earthly idea whether keeping my attitude upbeat has made an impact in a clinical sense on my myeloma cells. Scientists might have an opinion – I don’t.

I have no evidence that my focus on hope and optimism has played any role in my good fortune of having achieved a complete response, without relapse, thus far.

What I do know is that my positive attitude has had a direct impact on the quality of my everyday life.

I decided early on that I would not allow myeloma to poison whatever time I had with my loved ones, even during the difficult periods.

While I would never consider having myeloma a gift, I do see it as an opportunity to live my faith which en­courages me not to worry or to be afraid. Hard to do, but easier when I am positive.

I’ve chosen not to be bitter about my career being derailed, about my body being broken, about my finances being wrecked, about those of my friends and colleagues who have left my circle because they saw no value in sticking by someone who is profoundly ill. It’s sad, but it happens.

I am positive that life is too short to agonize about people who don’t stand by you.

Being positive might not cure me, but by consciously filling my days with laughter, hope, optimism, and love, my life will be much sweeter.

I saw the big guy and his wife two days later. They were smiling.