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Laughter
By: Marilyn Page; Published: June 24, 2020 @ 5:46 pm | Comments Disabled
I grew up with my four siblings in a home full of laughter, fun, and hijinks. Most of the hilarity was compliments of our dad. He was a larger-than-life character loved by throngs. His jokes, his pranks, the funny songs he would create on the spur of the moment, and his story-telling kept us all laughing. We all looked forward to supper time (yes, “supper”; I’m from New England), because we knew it would be a whole lot of fun. Sometimes it was hard to eat because we were laughing so hard.
I was diagnosed with monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) in 2014 when my primary care doctor was checking my thyroid and decided to “throw in one other test.” “Don’t worry,” she said as she was explaining the diagnosis to me, her stunned patient, “it’s a benign condition; only a very small fraction of people diagnosed with MGUS progress to multiple myeloma.”
And she was right. It was benign. That is, until it wasn’t.
That diagnosis of MGUS led to a lot of studying and reading about myeloma and to regular blood tests, first every six months, then every four, then two, and then every month as my lambda free light chain number went higher and higher. At the beginning of February, 2018 my first bone marrow biopsy confirmed I had multiple myeloma, that 60 percent of the myeloma cells were aggressive, and that I had at least one high-risk factor.
OK. So I have multiple myeloma. Is it challenging to have multiple myeloma? Of course. I have shortness of breath walking up any tiny grade. The spectacular high and then the just-as- spectacular crashing that I experience from dexamethasone are worthy of being Olympic events. (One friend, also a cancer fighter, suggested I could open a cleaning service for the “high days” and call it Marilyn’s “Speed” Cleaning.) Being dizzy has taken on a whole new meaning. Waiting for lab results is not my idea of a good time.
Managing it all takes some effort, but I decided early on that it doesn’t have to define or consume every minute, or even most, of my life. I don’t know how long I will live, but, then, I didn’t know that before my diagnosis either. What is most important to me is not that I have myeloma or that I don’t know how long I will live or that I have some unwanted and difficult side effects or that lab results might tell me something I don’t want to hear or that I have to change treatment protocols. What counts most to me is that I still matter to the same people I mattered to pre-diagnosis, and I’m still important in their lives. And that goes both ways.
I’m 81 years old, I’m a retired college professor, I have multiple myeloma, and I live alone, but none of these separately or all together define who I am. Myeloma isn’t me; I am not myeloma. Myeloma is just a new, added dimension of the same old me. Myeloma isn’t funny, but having it doesn’t mean I can’t laugh or have fun. I still love to laugh and have fun, just as I did in my growing-up home. Sometimes, I even make other people laugh.
There are plenty of sources that tell us that laughter has great powers. It can reduce pain, improve oxygen flow to the heart and brain, lower blood sugar levels, and alleviate mental stress. It’s magical.
Norman Cousins, in his book Anatomy of an Illness, recounts how he watched Marx Brothers films every night to help eliminate his extraordinary pain caused by ankylosing spondylitis, a painful, degenerative, and supposedly irreversible disease. Ten minutes of laughter a night bought him two pain-free hours, and, among other measures, that laughter helped him to recover.
We all respond and adapt to multiple myeloma and all it brings in different ways. To maintain as much good health as possible, several months ago I set a goal for myself that I would walk a half marathon a week. That would be approximately two miles (3.2 kilometers) a day. Sometimes I make it, sometimes I don’t. I always try. But walking in a city in the middle of a pandemic is a treacherous undertaking, to say the least, for anyone with a compromised immune system.
But there is something I can do that is safe, great exercise, and has amazing benefits. I can always – Every. Single. Day. – find time to laugh for at least 15 minutes, and often for much longer than that, whether it’s sustained in one event or spread out over the day. For me, that daily dose of laughter, for however long, is even more important for my well-being than 20 or 30 minutes of ordinary and even safe exercise, and way, way easier.
My growing-up years are serving me well, and it’s a free prescription.
This is a guest patient column by Marilyn Page, who was diagnosed with monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) in 2014 at the age of 74. In February 2018, her diagnosis changed to active, symptomatic multiple myeloma. Marilyn lives in Seattle, Washington and currently is being treated with Darzalex (daratumumab) and dexamethasone.
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