Does anyone else remember exactly when their old, regular, pre-myeloma life ended? I can still pinpoint the last moment of my old life. I think about it every Halloween.

It was the moment right before I pressed the “play” button on my answer­ing machine on the afternoon of October 31, 2005. Until I pressed that button, I was a regular, healthy, 30-year-old stay-at-home mom to a five-month-old baby.

After I pressed it, I was a myeloma patient.

No symptoms. No warning. Just, “Poof!”

It was Halloween. My daughter and I had just returned home from a party. She was in her infant carrier, dressed in a little white gown and a brown flannel hat with “buns” on the side. She was Baby Princess Leia.

I needed to get Princess Leia a bottle and put her down for a nap, but the light was blinking on the machine, so I pressed the button.

It was a nurse from my doctor’s office. I’d gone in about a week earlier for an annual physical, but I’d felt fine. I’d simply decided to have a checkup, like a responsible mother-type, maybe have my cholesterol tested. I certainly did not expect to get blindsided by cancer on Halloween.

The nurse said my protein level was too high, and I needed to see a “blood specialist” right away. Back then I didn’t even know enough to know that “blood specialist” was the nurse’s non-scary way of saying “oncol­o­gist.”

Still, I knew something was up.

I called back and made the “blood specialist” appointment. Once my daughter was napping, I Googled “high protein.” The search pulled up web sites about multiple myeloma. The Internet kept telling me that multiple myeloma was a fatal disease that only elderly people get, a disease that comes with a variety of symptoms, such as broken bones, frequent infections, and kidney problems.

The Internet also seemed to take great delight in telling me most myeloma patients live three years after diagnosis. That statistic was everywhere. The Internet wouldn’t shut up about it.

But I didn’t have any of those symptoms! I felt fine! I was 30! I was a new mom! New moms aren’t allowed to get fatal diseases and die in three years! I knew there was some mistake.

There was no mistake. Doctors spent about a month testing my blood and urine, x-raying my body, and digging into my bone marrow before it was official. I was a 30-year-old with smoldering multiple myeloma, which progressed to active myeloma in 2007.

My old life melted away. I stepped into a world where doctors and needles and tests were normal, everyday things. Just like that, in the blink of an answering machine, I was Cancer Girl. Forever labeled.

Nine years later, I’m still here. Princess Leia is in fourth grade. She’s gone from sitting in an infant carrier to attending Girl Scout meetings and drama classes. So far, my myeloma has been non-aggressive, and the Revlimid (lenalidomide) I take has few side effects. I don’t really feel like I’m fighting cancer. I’m living with cancer. I go about my day, and the cancer follows me everywhere, like the cloud of dust that follows Pig Pen in the Peanuts cartoons.

I know I’m lucky. I know my life is good. Still, I miss the person I was before I pressed that button.

I’ll never again go a single day – sometimes even an hour – without thinking about The Myeloma. Is the Revlimid still working? What will my blood test say this month? Is that pain in my shoulder a sore muscle from my BodyPump class, or is it The Myeloma finally deciding to munch through my bones?

Most of the time, I’m not thinking these things in a dramatic way. I’ve simply become used to thinking like this. It’s hard to remember how it was before. It’s hard to remember how much everything changed.

I miss the days when I had absolutely no idea what multiple myeloma was. When I couldn’t speak expertly about the ins and outs of having a bone marrow biopsy. When I wasn’t obsessed with my blood test num­bers going up or down.

I wish I could go back in time and talk to the woman who walked through the kitchen door on October 31, 2005. I’d tell her to wait another minute before listening to that message, to enjoy just one more minute as a regular, normal, healthy mom, to look at her baby one last time without that big cloud of cancer dust dancing all around her.

I can still see that woman, and she’s happily clueless.

The light was blinking on the machine, so she pressed the button.