Many of the topics I write about start out as random things in my life that eventually grow into a column. Sometimes the seed is planted by a comment someone makes, or perhaps something I read, or in at least one case by a dream.

The idea for this month's column came to me when I recently heard the song "Once In A Lifetime" by the Talking Heads, which includes the line "You may ask yourself, well, how did I …

Celgene announced this morning that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has set a date for an advisory committee meeting to review the company’s application for approval of pomalidomide.

Celgene (NASDAQ: CELG) has applied to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to have pomalidomide (Pomalyst) approved, in combination with dexamethasone(Decadron), for the treatment of patients with relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma that has progressed after at least two prior therapies.

The Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC), which advises …

Getting a multiple myeloma diagnosis just stuns you.

That is, once you figure out what it is and what it means.

I’d guess that most people who are confronted with the news probably have never heard of myeloma.  I can say that I’d heard of it, but knew absolutely nothing about it.  I wasn’t even sure it was cancer.

Two things about myeloma stuck in my mind in the aftermath of my diagnosis in 2006: Incurable. Almost invariably fatal.

It didn’t take …

Results from a recent retrospective study suggest that blood tests may be sufficient, and that urine tests and skeletal surveys may not be necessary, to detect most cases of relapse or disease progression after stem cell transplantation for multiple myeloma.

However, the investigators point out that patients who show clinical signs of relapse/progression, such as such kidney problems or bone lesions, after stem cell transplantation may need additional types of testing, since they tend to have poorer prognoses.

The investigators …

What was the weather report usually in the spring of 2010 when I was undergoing stem cell transplantation?  It seemed to match my mental state: Snow showers (cold and lonely thoughts); freezing rain (tears unwilling to be shed); fog (brain fog, that is), often interspersed with bright sunshine (grateful to have survived the myeloma).  Typical foothills weather; if you don’t like it, wait 15 minutes, and it will probably change.  That is the way it is in the shadow of …

The results of a recent study show that MRI is more accurate than PET-CT for staging newly diag­nosed multiple myeloma patients and identifying patients with re­lapsed disease.

However, the results also show that PET-CT scans are more useful for eval­u­ating a patient’s response to ther­apy.

The study investigators indicate that their results are similar to those of pre­vi­ous studies that com­pared MRI and PET-CT for diagnosing patients and eval­u­ating response to ther­apy.  They point out, how­ever, that since their study …

I am writing this column 30 days after my donor stem cell transplant.

The road to this point has been far from easy.  Nor do I believe that I am anywhere near “out of the woods” as far as recovery.

However, I am feeling pretty good about where I am at right now and about my decision to go forward with the transplant.

First, a little background:

I have written about this in some of my previous posts.  Since being …