Unexpected things can present tough choices that change the way you live. I sus­pect that most myeloma patients would agree. All myeloma patients have entered a doctor’s office as an “un­ini­ti­ated” (reg­u­lar person) and left as a cancer patient. That diag­nosis changes a person’s life forever, and in its wake there are many choices to be made: initial treat­ment regi­men, radi­a­tion, stem cell trans­plant, clin­i­cal trial par­tic­i­pa­tion, and more.

Over the past six weeks, the pandemic known as coronavirus dis­ease 2019, or COVID-19, has entered the world’s vocabulary. The number of reported cases is growing ex­po­nen­tially even as we try to “flatten the curve” to keep from overwhelming hos­pi­tals in the face of this virus, for which there is no current cure. As anyone living today can attest, COVID-19 has left us with some tough choices.

In the city of Houston, as in cities all across America, we are living under a modified shelter-in-place order. This had had serious con­se­quences for our local economy. Non-essential com­pa­nies, res­tau­rants, gyms, stores, churches, and schools are all closed or offering modified services only. Many employers have laid off their employees because they could not afford them on the payroll any longer. This was cer­tainly a tough choice for the city leaders to make. No mayor wants to be forced to choose be­tween a free economy and rampant dis­ease that could decimate the pop­u­la­tion.

This shelter-in-place order has dramatically changed life in Houston. Citizens are allowed out to grocery stores, medical appoint­ments, and to walk in parks for exercise as long as they keep a six-foot distance be­tween themselves and other people. So much has been made of how to avoid inter­acting with people in pub­lic that we now have a new buzzword to describe it: “social distancing.” The highways are traffic-free, and the roads are sparsely driven. For an area boasting five million people, that is no small feat. Non-essential businesses have been closed, and the pub­lic is urged to stay at home and avoid contact with anyone outside one’s household. This has been dif­fi­cult for many people, un­used to being stuck at home, unable to go to work, send chil­dren to school, or socialize with others.

Despite these tough changes, I think myeloma patients, especially those ones who gone through stem cell trans­plant pro­ce­dures, are better prepared to adapt to the chal­lenges that this pandemic has brought to our lives.

Many of us know what it is like to practice social distancing due to weakened immune sys­tems. My hus­band Daniel and I didn’t see friends or family for nearly three months after his stem cell trans­plant. We didn’t travel or go to church services, movies, or res­tau­rants. We worked from home so as to not expose him to viruses. The only time we left the house was to take him to the cancer center for his medical appoint­ments. I occasionally left the house to pick up supplies, but I uti­lized online grocery pick up or de­livery as much as possible so that I wouldn’t be mixing with the pub­lic.

Even now, after years of myeloma treat­ment and countless diagnoses of bronchitis, pneu­monia, and viruses, we are hyper­vigilant about things that most people take for granted: sitting down at a table, traveling in an airplane, touching a door. Long before COVID-19, I carried hand sanitizer with us every­where and wiped down pub­lic surfaces with cleaning wipes!

Hospitals have made tough changes as well. Except for extreme cases, hos­pi­tals are no longer allow­ing visitors and care­givers. This means there are mothers giving birth alone without their labor part­ners. Spouses cannot be there to care for another through treat­ment, and patients must rely ex­clu­sively on hos­pi­tal staff for all their needs. I cannot even go with my hus­band to see his specialist, given the new restrictions. I don’t mind telling you that it’s brought some anxiety to our house.

I under­stand why this dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion was made. The number of COVID-19 cases is growing ex­po­nen­tially in our area, and there aren’t enough tests to test everyone. As a result, only those with symp­toms are getting tested, even though we know from those exposed to COVID-19 on cruise ships that some people tested pos­i­tive for the virus who didn’t have any symp­toms at all. Therefore, there may be many people carrying the virus who don’t know it. Hospitals there­fore have had no choice but to lock down their facilities, but it was a tough choice, and it has impacted a lot of people, patients and care­givers alike.

A dif­fi­cult choice I’ve personally made was how to care for my mother during this pandemic. Daniel and I chose to self-quarantine after the first case of COVID-19 was announced in the United States, so we’ve been in a sterile bubble this past month. Unfor­tu­nately, my mother has mobility issues due to a recent injury, and she lives alone in another city nearly five hours away. She has been mixing with the pub­lic because she needed to go to work every day. Now, with both of our re­spec­tive­ cities in lock-down and given her health issues, Daniel and I needed to decide whether we could risk the exposure to bring her here with us. In the end, the choice seemed obvious. Like Houston leaders making choices be­tween two tough options, my mom will stay with us until the virus passes and it is safe for her to return home.

This is an unprecedented time for our world, our country, and our communities. COVID-19 cer­tainly has brought us all tough choices. We know that there will be things that we cannot con­trol. But if dealing with the ever-changing complexities of myeloma treat­ment has taught us any­thing, it is that we know we need to follow medical advice, be strong, and persevere, for “this, too, shall pass.”