Last month, I watched the Juno Awards, the Canadian music awards, on TV. Broadcast from Vancouver, the show featured a live performance by Diana Krall. That alone was enough for me to watch the cermonies, for Krall is an artist I admire, both for her music and for her support of multiple myeloma patients and their families.

The Artist of the Year award was awarded posthumously to Gord Downie of band ‘The Tragically Hip.’ He passed away last year from brain cancer after a two-year battle that he played out publicly with his band. As the show went on, a lifetime achievement award was given to the group ‘The Bare­naked Ladies.’ Among the mem­bers of the group who made accep­tance speeches was Kevin Hearne, who thanked his fellow band mem­bers for standing by him through two cancer diagnoses.

The morning after that show, I was still mulling over the fact that so many of us have been affected by cancer. It is commonly said that every family is affected by cancer somehow. In my own case, I have had two cancers, multiple myeloma and breast cancer.

Even though I am now in a remission from both the myeloma and the breast cancer, I can’t forget entirely about problems due to the diseases. There are little things happening in my life that keep me grounded and that remind me that I am still a patient.

First and foremost, I am still taking an aromatase inhibitor due to my breast cancer diagnosis. The drug cuts back on the amount of estrogen my body produces. I am used to the drug now after having taken it for a year, and I am not experiencing as many aches and pains as I did when I first started to take it. In addition, I get checked every six months for the breast cancer and am having mammograms annually.

The multiple myeloma seems to be in a quiet phase now, for my blood work is nearly normal when I get it checked monthly. Every once in a while either the kappa-lambda ratio or the M-protein results will jump up a bit, as if to say, ‘You can’t stop worrying just yet!’ Sure enough, I do worry about any small change in my test results, even though they are not significant enough for me to be thinking of restarting treatment.

When I go to get the blood draw for my myeloma lab tests, I am reminded that I cannot have the blood drawn from my left arm. Some lymph nodes were removed there for testing during the breast cancer surgery. So the one cancer reminds me of the other cancer. And quite often the lab technicians need to draw blood from the veins in the back of one hand, which reminds me of when I had Velcade infusions into the veins in my hands back in 2009. My veins started to collapse during the time of that treatment regimen, but fortu­nately that doesn’t happen now.

I also have very thickened toenails, which I need to get a pedicure to trim. They have been like that ever since the high-dose chemotherapy and stem cell transplant that I had. My toes still tingle, which is a rem­nant of the mild neuropathy I experienced during my Velcade induction therapy back in 2009. This is so normal for me now that I don’t notice it much anymore.

Another change in myself that seems normal now is that I am shorter by almost two inches. This was due to the collapse of several vertebrae that happened just before I got the myeloma diagnosis. Although fortu­nately I am not in any pain now from those injuries, my physique has changed. I always need to try on clothes before I buy anything, to make sure that they are a flattering fit. So usually I don’t worry about this, but when I do think of it, it reminds me of what a vicious disease myeloma can be, and how I desperately want to stay in remission.

On a lighter note, recently I have been finishing up a quilt that I started in 2012 as a ‘quilt block of the month’ project. There was a quilting store near the cancer center that I used to drop in on after I had been at the center for appointments of one sort or another. Over time, I accumulated enough kits for monthly blocks to make three quilts. I worked on the quilts, but never quite finished any of them. So since I am now in another remission and trying to get really organized, I have been going through a lot of the quilt projects that I accumulated over time.

I took out one of the projects, called ‘Vintage China’, and finished the blocks and have been sewing it to­gether. I noticed some errors in the stitching that I can chalk up to being rather scattered at the time. I re­mem­ber that I was taking dexamethasone for some of the times when I was sewing. I also took quite a while to recover from chemo brain, and sometimes I think I never did recover completely from that. Some of the blocks were rumpled, and I feared that the quilt was ruined. But a steam pressing helped a lot, and I am able to finish this project.

I wonder now why I was so worried about starting and finishing a quilt, but it seems a shame just to aban­don these projects, so I guess I will be puzzling out quilt blocks for the rest of the year. This is good for me, to work with the shapes in the blocks, and try to sew them in correctly too.

I guess I could ask the same thing about my health: What am I so worried about right now? After all, I am relatively lucky to have even survived two cancers, let alone being off treatment now for them. I suspect that given the biology of multiple myeloma, more treatments may be in my future, as much as I would like to be in denial about that. So I muddle along, trying to stay on top of work, family events, and all the things I really like to do. Behind the scenes, my husband and I are really trying to get our lives more streamlined so that no matter what happens in the future, one or the other of us could function here and keep everything running.

Even though my main worry is about myeloma, and it keeps me grounded, I realize that other people our age have suffered from strokes, heart attacks, accidents, other cancers, and the like. So it is not un­rea­sonable for my husband and I to assess our situation and just take on what we can manage at the current time. We have so many positive things, people, and events in our lives that we want to enjoy that as much as possible. Our family has grown too, and we like to spend lots of time with the grandchildren.

What keeps you grounded?

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The quotation for this month is from Celine Dion (1968 - ), a Canadian singer, who said: "My feet are definitely more grounded than before. And I know that I'm not holding onto a dream. I'm holding onto my life."