Since the pan­dem­ic began, I’ve been spending my days at home on my half-acre prop­er­ty, which I long ago nicknamed ‘SoFUH,’ which stands for Sokol Family Urban Homestead.

When I’m not out work­ing the land, and by that I mean dead-heading rho­do­den­drons, fuchsias, and geraniums, pulling weeds, or picking green beans and chard, I can be found inside either messing up or clean­ing up the kitch­en, perched on the sofa videoconferencing with loved ones, cor­re­spond­ing, reading, re­search­ing, or mending. …

I wrote my first column for The Beacon last summer not really know­ing what to ex­pect. At the time, I had two major con­cerns. 

The first con­cern was that I had never really written much for pub­lic con­sump­tion, so I was un­cer­tain about my ability to connect with an audience or provide a reason­ably in­ter­est­ing take on living with mul­ti­ple myeloma. 

The other con­cern has been the always present un­cer­tainty as to whether or not I would still be around …

Recently I finished a needlework project that was a lot of work. It was a wedding sampler for my daughter and her hus­band who got married in 2014. Why did it take me so long to finish it, I wondered.

I realized that I had a lot going on in my life in the last six years, in­clud­ing treat­ments for mul­ti­ple myeloma. I also realized that doing stitching helps me to relax during stressful times.

I keep a detailed list …

I know it's been less than two months since I wrote another column with the word ‘wait’ in the title, but it seems to be a re­cur­ring theme for me.

I was officially diag­nosed with smol­der­ing myeloma 10 years ago this month, and I have been in watch-and-wait mode since then. My original hematologist offloaded most of her patients last fall, and I was assigned a new doctor.

Predictably, but …

The cur­rent coro­na­virus pan­dem­ic has made some­thing apparent to me: assessing my personal risk level for Covid-19 is complicated, and assessing our “collective risk” may be impossible.

It’s been four months since Covid-19 became a house­hold word and we entered a state of temporary lockdown. As we gathered supplies and made arrangements to work from home, I thought, this isn’t so bad! When else have we had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to stay at home and relax to­geth­er?

I had my mother come …

When trying to encapsulate my life ex­peri­ences and paths traveled, there are two very distinct roads taken. There was the path taken with ex­peri­ences before “the cancer,” and then, of course, there is the cur­rent path of living with “the cancer” that I am on now.

While recognizing that there were events before diag­nosis that were mem­o­ra­ble – wedding, birth of chil­dren, death of a parent – generally speak­ing, my life before mul­ti­ple myeloma was pretty routine. My old life.

My new life …

I was diag­nosed with smol­der­ing myeloma in 2010 when my chil­dren were 7 and 10 years old. Three years prior, their Dad drowned after being ejected from his surf ski, a spe­cial­ized lightweight kayak.

I’ll never forget sharing the news of his accident with my chil­dren. Their Dad was in a coma in the intensive care unit. They were so young, it was such a shock, and they came up with what I thought were very sophisticated ques­tions. “Is he …