Myeloma Mom: What I Learned From Bogie And Bacall
I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma nearly 10 years ago. I remember a doctor telling me it was an “exciting time” for myeloma.
At the time, I felt the exact opposite of excited, but now I can understand what he meant. Over the last decade, many new myeloma treatments have been approved and even more are on the way. Life expectancy and optimism has increased.
Although there is never a “good” time to get cancer, I know I’ve been benefiting from medical treatments and knowledge that didn’t exist 10 years, even five years, before my diagnosis.
When you’re a cancer patient, however, you’re always looking toward the future. When is the next new medical breakthrough? What is the next new treatment? I can’t say that I ever once thought about the past. What was it like to be a cancer patient prior to 2005? What was cancer treatment like in the decades before I was even born, say, 50 or 60 years ago?
The answer came recently in a bargain-priced celebrity biography that I downloaded to my Kindle.
I am powerless to resist bargain-priced Kindle books, especially if they are celebrity biographies. So when Lauren Bacall’s autobiography, By Myself, was offered for $1.99, I snatched it up.
Bacall gave a detailed account of her life, beginning with her days as a struggling stage actress and model in New York City. She finally got her big break in Hollywood, starring opposite Humphrey Bogart in "To Have and Have Not" in 1944. The pair fell in love, and she married Bogart (who she always called Bogie) soon after making the film.
They had two children, and their lives were happy until 1956, when Bogie was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Bacall spared no detail in describing Bogie’s illness and death. This section of the book was incredibly sad and disturbing, but it was also fascinating to me. Of course, it makes complete sense that the lives of cancer patients have changed drastically since 1956, but I had never really realized exactly how much has changed.
The treatment options were few in the 1950s. “So little was known about cancer,” Bacall wrote. “There was surgery, there was x-ray, cobalt, nitrogen mustard – and that was it.”
But the lack of treatment options is not what shocked me. It was the attitudes toward cancer.
Doctors shared very little information with the couple. They were simply expected to follow doctors’ orders – and they did. Today, a cancer diagnosis sends patients straight to Google to learn about our condition. We write lists of questions for our doctors, pour over our lab results, seek second opinions, find support groups, and expect our doctors to be straight with us. In 1956, there was none of that.
“There was no discussion of the seriousness of it,” Bacall wrote. “All I understood was that Bogie needed an operation – nothing else.”
“We had to do as advised,” she also wrote. “The doctors knew a lot more than we did … The doctors were all good men, the best in their fields, but I always felt there were things they never mentioned.”
In fact, when Bogie’s cancer returned a few months after his surgery, the doctors told Bacall it was back – and they all decided not to tell Bogie. They told him instead that the additional treatments he needed were to remove “scar tissue.” He never questioned them.
Up until he died, Bogie largely remained in the dark about his illness. Although he was brave and fought to survive, he didn’t seem to know exactly what he was fighting against. Days before his death, he asked his doctor why he didn’t seem to be getting any better.
“Am I getting worse or is it what you expect?” he asked.
“I would say it’s about what we expect,” the doctor replied. There was no further discussion.
Sixty years later, cancer is still an ugly, nasty disease, but to me it’s a shame that patients decades ago had to spend their final days in the dark, with no information, no support, few opportunities to discuss or understand what was happening to them.
Now, we can reach out to other patients who have the same disease. We can join support groups and talk openly about cancer. We can educate ourselves about our illness and make informed decisions alongside our doctors.
I’m glad that things have changed. One thing Bacall wrote, however, is still as true in 2015 as it was in the 1950s – we’re still hoping for a cure.
A doctor told her, “As long as the patient’s alive, there’s a chance. Research is being conducted all the time – one day suddenly there’ll be a cure, as with penicillin. One day there was no penicillin, the next day there was.”
Here’s lookin’ at you, Humphrey Bogart. We’ll always have hope.
Karen Crowley is a multiple myeloma patient and columnist at The Myeloma Beacon. You can view a list of her columns here.
If you are interested in writing a regular column for The Myeloma Beacon, please contact the Beacon team at .
Great column, Karen. Remarkable how much our society and culture has changed since the 50's. Doctors are not gods anymore, just hard-working consultants who offer their best educated opinion.
RT
Great column as usual, Karen. Like you,I am happy that there is much more transparency in sharing treatment and prognosis information today than in yesteryear. I'm not so good at burying my head in the sand like an ostrich or basking in the darkness like a mushroom. Incidentally, Lauren Bacall sure did make me want to become a much better whistler. Be well!
This is so true. I have an autobiography written by a cousin in which he clearly takes pride in never disclosing to his wife that she had cancer. He "bore the burden alone." I don't know what kind of cancer she had, but the doctors identified it and told her husband decades before she died. Imagine what it would be like not to be told what was wrong with you, even as you were dying! Imagine having that extreme a secret in a marriage! Deception all around. Horribly insulting to the dignity of the person.
Great article Karen. I love reading all of the myeloma patient columns, as I derive new insights and just the knowledge that I am not alone in this. People without multiple myeloma cannot really get what we experience. Both the physical and the emotional. I think I am doing pretty well 6 years after diagnosis and 5 years after SCT.
I feel blessed that I live in an age of so much research and promise for longer lives and perhaps a cure.
Just knowing you have survived for ten years now gives me such hope and a feeling of lightness and happiness. Thank you so much!
Great Article
Thanks Karen for the insightful column. I think it is because of how awful it was to have any kind of cancer decades ago, that even now people cringe at the word 'chemotherapy'. We myeloma patients have much better treatments and outcomes now than even a decade ago. We are living in a hopeful time.
Great article. It is amazing how things have changed since the 1950's! Thank God we have folks willing and excited about finding a cure for cancer. I was diagnosed 2+ years ago and I'm still trying to figure out what all the lingo means, but it is available to me (if I could keep my focus on all the terms).
Again, great article.
Great article
Thanks for the article.
It makes me think of a gentleman in my church who's first wife died of multiple myeloma 20+ years ago. When I was diagnosed, he shared how awful his wife's illness and death were because there was only minimal treatments, and the treatment was almost as bad as the disease left unchecked. So thankful that doctors have cared enough to progress or treatment options for us today!
Ask anyone who has hepatitis C if there are miracles, and most will say yes. I know several friends whom after years of the nasty treatments required, up to liver transplants, are now CURED. Not remission, not doing better ... CURED. We should settle for no less.
Thanks for another excellent column, Karen.
A lot of progress has been made, as you pointed out so well. But there is still a long way to go for those of us with multiple myeloma and for many others with other forms of cancer.
Looking backward as you did in this column does help put the progress in perspective. That's one of the things I liked about "The Emperor of All Maladies."
Hello, Karen:
I always enjoy your insight. This one was very artistic. Impressive. There is a certain inspiration to your creativity, and we expect as much (or better) in you future columns. Thank you.