I wanted to take this opportunity to wish all of my fellow multiple myeloma patients, their friends, families, and caregivers a happy Thanksgiving!

If you think about it, Thanksgiving is an ideal holiday. Rich or poor, young or old, healthy or sick with cancer, everyone has something to be thankful for. And it is a relatively non-denominational holiday.

But it isn't perfect. It is a difficult day to be alone. And yet large family gatherings can be overwhelming, stressful, or …

The Myeloma Beacon is pleased to announce the introduction of Turkish-language translations of select articles on the Beacon website.

Articles available in Turkish will be marked with a small Turkish flag. Additionally, a Turkish flag at the upper right of all Myeloma Beacon pages will give readers quick access to all Turkish-language articles.

The translations will be provided by Ali Arsan, a Turkish native and whose mother was diagnosed with multiple myeloma last year.

“I am very pleased and …

Long-term follow-up results from a clinical trial show that multiple myeloma patients who underwent two stem cell transplants remained in remission longer and also survived longer than patients who underwent one transplant. These findings are updated results from a previously published study comparing single versus double transplantation.

Multiple myeloma patients are commonly treated with stem cell transplantation. Several studies have shown a survival benefit to having a second transplant a couple of months after the first. However long-term follow-up results …

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced earlier today that denosumab, which will be marketed by Amgen under the brand name Xgeva, has been approved to help prevent fractures and to slow bone disease in patients with solid tumors. It was not approved at this time for use in patients with multiple myeloma.

“It wasn’t approved [for myeloma] because the Xgeva-treated subset of multiple myeloma patients had more deaths than the control arm,” said Erica Jefferson, a spokesperson for the …

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced today that it approved Amgen’s Xgeva to help prevent fractures and to slow bone disease in patients with solid tumors that have spread to and caused damage to bone. Xgeva was not approved, however, for multiple myeloma patients with bone damage.

Xgeva is the new brand name given to denosumab when used for the treatment of cancer-related bone disease. Denosumab at lower doses is marketed under the brand name Prolia for the treatment …

“You have multiple myeloma.” I would guess you didn't even know what multiple myeloma was when you heard those fateful words some time ago.

But chances are, if you are reading this column, you moved past that uninformed point some time ago.

As a newly diagnosed patient, you go from knowing nothing about your cancer to being an expert in a matter of months. Continue along the learning curve I just described, and your understanding may exponentially expand to the …

I was thinking the other day about mortality. By no means am I obsessed with this, but a thought process about one’s own mortality is, for me at least, sometimes unavoidable, given a life-shortening multiple myeloma diagnosis.

There doesn’t seem to be much written – there’s some – about the psychic impact of living with a disease that’s pretty much always fatal, and one where you don’t really have a clue when your myeloma will turn on you and go …