While basking in the afterglow of a recent gazillion-course United Methodist pot luck supper, one of my very favorite church ladies sauntered over and confided in me that one of her elderly friends back in Iowa had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma.

As we talked about how her friend was dealing with his formidable chal­lenges and I shared about the frustrations that I was facing, she caught me totally off guard when she said:

"You know, all in all, you should thank your lucky stars that you came down with myeloma when you were young and strong and able to put up a good fight."

Lucky?  I’d never really equated having multiple myeloma with anything close to being lucky.

Frankly, I would have felt luckier if I’d had another 30 or so years under my belt before myeloma started beating me up.

Before I could begin to voice my opinion, she asked me if I remembered the old cornpone television show, "Hee Haw," and how Roy Clark, Archie Campbell, and others would humorously lament in song ^[1] about life’s woeful miseries.

I had to laugh when she suggested that I’d fit right in with those boys. Their hard luck verses were always followed by the same chorus:

Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me

I laughed, she was right. I could hang with those guys. Now THAT was a tune a myeloma patient like me could croon with some real conviction. I’ll bet that some of you even sang it out loud just now.

For some reason her choice of the word ‘lucky’ struck a chord in me. I countered her example with this oldie-but-goodie:

LOST:  Mature, gray, runaway male dog. Missing leg, walks with limp. Blind in one eye, nearly deaf. Matted fur, ear mangled in a dog fight.  Tail paralyzed in car accident, drags on ground. Answers to the name "Lucky."

There have certainly been days in my seven-year myeloma journey when I felt like that Lucky Dog. I know that there were times when I wanted to run away from it all.

So, I got to thinking. Am I lucky even though I live with multiple myeloma?

Well, some myeloma patients struggled for a long time to receive a meaningful diagnosis. From the day that I first complained to my small town family doctor about my backache to the day that I found myself being examined by a renowned myeloma specialist in another state, only one week had passed. I suppose that that could be considered lucky.

Our small hospital had very few imaging machines. The MRI and CT scanners were normally booked solid. When my local doctor stepped out of the room to check on the availability of the equipment, he shuffled back in, scratched his chin, and said "This never happens, but both machines are open right now. This must be your lucky day."

On the first day of the complete diagnostic workup at the major myeloma center I chose for treatment, the physician overseeing the MRI unit all but demanded that I be admitted to the hospital without delay. He explained, in glorious detail, that my excruciating back pain was due to collapsed vertebrae and that unstable shards of bone and tumors were pressing directly on the thecal sac surrounding my spinal cord. No wonder aspirin didn’t help.

Had I fallen in my weakened state and injured myself, paralysis could have been a very real possibility. I learned that the patient in the room next to me on the myeloma ward had suffered that unfortunate outcome.

And before I decided to visit with my family doctor, I was scheduled to see a friend’s massage therapist to help remedy the pain from what I thought was a pinched nerve or a pulled muscle. I was disappointed when the session had been cancelled because the therapist was under the weather. Her feeling puny that afternoon may have been a major stroke of good luck for me. Who knows what could have happened?

I spent 10 months in Little Rock, Arkansas, being treated for myeloma, during which time I was able to come back home for a couple of brief visits. On one break I developed a respiratory infection and went in to meet with my new local family doctor.

When she learned that I was being treated for myeloma, I was quickly sent to the large regional medical center an hour away from home to be seen by her father, a prominent emergency room physician and infectious disease specialist. The kicker was that they had a family member dealing with myeloma and they knew how important timely treatment was to combat what turned out to be my first case of pneumonia. Again, I was one rather lucky patient.

Like the rest of us, I could rightfully complain about our lot in life. But I could also go on and on about how lucky, how fortunate, how blessed I’ve been in big and small ways these last few years.

I’m lucky to have a wife who lived up to her vows to stay with me "in sickness and in health" even when she was afraid and overwhelmed.

I have friends and family who dropped everything to be at my side when I needed them.

The drugs that have successfully kept me in remission for several years were little more than seeds of brilliant ideas in the minds of researchers not too many years ago.

Sometimes you have to dig and scrape and squint to see just how lucky you are in the middle of a storm. It’s a mindset to look for those moments, to appreciate those things. Try it. You might be surprised by what you’ll find.

And how lucky am I that a little old church lady knew exactly what buttons to push when she prodded me into counting my lucky stars?

FOUND: Mature, gray haired, middle aged man with multiple myeloma. Blind without his glasses. A bit deaf from making loud music. Numbness in hands and feet. Sometimes fatigued, experiences bone pain from fractures. Answers to the name "Lucky."