During my husband Daniel’s last specialist visit, I noticed a young couple sitting in the waiting room that I hadn’t seen before. They appeared to be in their late thirties and were nicely dressed, like they had just come from work. They looked ill at ease with their environment, as if this was all something new for them.

Since the woman’s plastic bracelet matched my husband’s, I could guess why. She sat there stoically, with her hands folded neatly in her lap. Her posture was a portrait of calm, statuesque equanimity. The only thing that gave her away was her eyes, which furtively glanced around every time a patient was called to the treatment area.

Her husband, on the other hand, had difficulty sitting down for very long. He would pop up for a magazine, sit down, and bounce his legs as he flipped through five or six pages before hopping up again for another one.  It’s possible that he had already read that month’s issue of Field and Stream, but I doubted it.

On the third hop up for a People magazine, he tripped on the chair beside us and might have landed in my lap if I hadn’t braced his fall. Embarrassed, he returned to his seat nearby and apologized, saying that he was a bit preoccupied. His wife patted him on the back and smiled, saying “Just a bit?” We all laughed. Dan and I assured him that everyone in the waiting room could relate, and not to worry.

From there we began to chat. Indeed the wife was newly diagnosed with multiple myeloma, and the couple had returned that day to get more details about her disease from her labs, bone marrow aspiration, and CT scans.

Her story was a fairly common one. She had gone to her primary care physician with pain in her back. He performed x-rays and lab work, and sent her to a general oncologist who broke the news.  “You have multiple myeloma,” he said. That day he scheduled her to begin treatment just a couple of days from then.

It was all moving too fast for her, she said, especially given that she didn’t even understand what she had. At a friend’s urging, she had made an appointment for a second opinion, and that is how she ended up in the waiting room at M. D. Anderson.

The first thing we did was congratulate her on making the decision to come to a myeloma specialist.

We knew the myeloma specialist she was scheduled to see, and we told the woman and her husband about his expertise in the field. We also said that we liked his bedside manner and good communication skills. They agreed that they had already had a better experience in one visit with him, than the rushed, “take no prisoners” approach of the other doctor, who had not done the level of diagnostic testing that she had received here.  Her new specialist had also taken the time to explain what the treatment options were, and that good outcomes were possible with those options today.

The real benefit to working with myeloma specialists, I explained, is that treatment is customized to the patient’s needs. We discussed how important cytogenetic testing was for an individualized treatment plan, and how her bone marrow aspiration would reveal the keys to treating her myeloma in targeted, specific ways.

We also mentioned another benefit of coming to a major cancer research center, which is the opportunity to participate in clinical trials testing novel therapies that will continue to redefine how myeloma is treated.

We explained that Dan had participated in a clinical trial of PVX410 in 2013 that may have contributed a year of stability to his smoldering myeloma.  Since 2014, his free light chain levels have been creeping up, but so far, we explained, he is still bone lesion free and not in treatment. While we can’t be certain that it was the clinical trial drug that caused the stability in his smoldering myeloma, we are thankful to be in good hands and feeling optimistic.

The point is, we told them, each case is different, and you do yourself a big favor by going to specialists who stay on top of the latest research, have access to clinical trials, and work with myeloma patients every day so that they can recognize the signs when treatment needs to change.

As we prepared to leave, Daniel left them with some advice that had helped him when he was first diagnosed with smoldering myeloma.  Daniel said,

“When I was first diagnosed, it was tough. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, you know what I mean? All I knew of cancer was that you got a tumor, cut it out, did chemo and radiation, and hoped it didn’t come back. But, how do you cut out your plasma cells?

“The best advice we received came from my internist, who had done his internship here. He told me that if you’re going to have cancer, myeloma is one of the better ones to get. He talked about the advancements that had been made in the field since he had begun his career in medicine, and he joked that statistically, I was more likely to die in a car accident than I would from myeloma.

“He then told me something that I’ve remembered ever since. Having myeloma is a marathon, not a sprint, he said. You’re a young man, and you have your whole life ahead of you. Make smart choices. Take care of your health. Follow the advice of your doctors, and be strong. You’ve got a long way to run.”

As we said our goodbyes, we wished them well. They seemed to be more at ease and grateful for the talk, but I think we were the ones most blessed by the exchange. The couple reminded me of us three years ago. Others had made such a difference for us along the way. It felt good to pay it forward to a fellow marathoner.