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.