I am often surprised at the things that bring people together. Recently, I shared an article online about one of my favorite musicians, Elvis Costello. This sparked a conversation with fellow Beacon columnist, Nancy Shamanna, who also likes his music and wrote a column ^[1] named after his song, “Watching the Detectives.”

She told me that she used to listen to that song over and over again before getting the results from her blood tests, thinking of the “detectives” in her blood that would indicate how she was doing with her myeloma. She then went on to tell me that Costello and his wife, jazz singer Diana Krall, were big fundraisers for multiple myeloma and had helped build the Krall Centre in Vancouver for stem cell transplants. Sadly, Krall’s mother was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 1994 and passed away in 2002. This news really stunned me. I had no idea that Elvis Costello and Diana Krall had anything to do with the myeloma world.

I’ve loved Elvis Costello’s music for a long time. I’ve seen him numerous times in concert, with the first time being in the late eighties when I was in high school. I thought it almost surreal that even before I met my husband and Costello met his wife, I was in an audience watching him perform and neither of us knew what a role multiple myeloma would play in our respective lives. To be clear, I’ve never met Mr. Costello or Ms. Krall, but between the music – which is such a personal thing to share – and watching them give interviews on talk shows and such, I felt like I had a sense of their personalities.

After Nancy told me about their connection with multiple myeloma, I couldn’t get it out of my head. I just kept thinking about how we all share this “rare” thing in common, and how it made me feel like I somehow knew them better.

I remember when my husband Daniel was diagnosed with smoldering myeloma in 2012. I was told that it was a rare blood cancer. I had never heard of multiple myeloma, and I certainly had never met anyone who had been diagnosed with it. I remember feeling so isolated as I tried to explain it to our family and friends, most of whom did not understand why they weren’t treating it when they knew he had it inside of him. They had never heard of myeloma either, so it was a very foreign thing to us all.

Since then, myeloma doesn’t seem so rare to me anymore. I’ve met three different coworkers whose family members all had myeloma – one a brother in law, one a parent, and one a cousin. A friend at church works for one of the pharmaceutical companies that makes multiple myeloma drugs, and I sang in choir with a friend whose parent had multiple myeloma. I’d even be willing to bet that most of us took a collective breath when news anchorman Tom Brokaw announced that he was diagnosed with it in 2014.

After myeloma became a part of my vocabulary, I saw it everywhere. From millionaires like Sam Walton to vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, all the way to everyday people like you and me. Myeloma has made a community of us, albeit an unwilling one.

While it’s not the kind of “exclusive” club that you want to be in, I can’t help but be amazed at the inroads that multiple myeloma continues to make in my life. I’ve connected with many people whom I would never have had a reason to know, except that we’ve been brought together by multiple myeloma. I’ve met dedicated cancer researchers, and I’ve been inspired by patients who persevere in the face of ongoing treatments and complications. From all of them I’ve learned bits and pieces that have helped me feel more integrated in this community. And that is comforting, knowing that while myeloma is somewhat unique amongst cancers, we are not alone in living with it.

I’ve written before about something that one of doctors said to us after Daniel was first diagnosed. He said, “For you, this is going to be a marathon; not a sprint.” I had no idea at the time, but he couldn’t have been more right. It’s been over five years since Daniel was diagnosed with smoldering myeloma, and we are still running the course. With each lap around the track it seems that we grow our cheering section, coaches, and teammates. We run each lap hoping that we can make it around again without taking a time out for treatment. Sadly, as we’ve started running this race, we’ve lost many good folks along the way. Their memories are with us as we meet new patients and their families that are being added all the time. It’s a strange gathering for sure.

Therefore, it’s from this surreal stadium in my mind’s eye where I picture us all this evening. The bleachers are filled with everyone from Elvis Costello and Diana Krall to Tom Brokaw and you and me. We’re clapping and cheering, and we’re hoping for a cure. We are a community.

I wish you all well, and I pray that you’ll have many, many more laps around the track.