It was such an awful shock to be diag­nosed with mul­ti­ple myeloma, and to be suffer­ing from ver­te­bral fractures and a high count of myeloma cells in my bone mar­row 11 years ago this July, that it drove all other con­cerns out of my mind and that of my dear hus­band and care­giver, Dilip.

For quite a long time after my diag­nosis, we were so taken up with the treat­ments and learning about the dis­ease, the stem cell trans­plant, and …

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. …

I may be dating myself (actually, I date a wonderful man), but I find the lyrics to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ 1981 song ‘Waiting’ so apropos to mul­ti­ple myeloma, and per­haps all cancer.

The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you get one more yard
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part

I was 15 the summer when that song came out, a teenager in the …

Sometimes you can teach old dogs new tricks, and other times those old dogs just need to remember the tricks they already know.

I have been living with mul­ti­ple myeloma for over five years, and trust me when I say that I am very grateful for this time. My gratefulness for life is hard to put into words. I love getting up in the morn­ing and realizing that I am looking down at the green grass. That is tre­men­dous and never …

Despite stress and setbacks, and a lot more ex­pense than we had ex­pected, I am in my new home in Julian, California, a small mountain com­munity famous for its apples and daffodils. My wonderful mate Kaitlin has gone back to Tucson to prepare our house for sale, but our old dog, Gus, is keeping me com­pany as I sit and read in front of the wood-burning stove.

Our manu­fac­tured home, turned into an amazing refuge by Kaitlin, is on …

Like a cabinet door left open, the outside world is calling me. To be honest, I’m surprised that I haven’t felt it before now. Towards the end of Feb­ru­ary, con­cerns about COVID-19 were being discussed in the media. Shortly there­after, the first case of the dis­ease was found in the U.S. By the first week of March, my hus­band Daniel and I entered a self-imposed quar­an­tine, which was welcome news to Daniel’s myeloma spe­cialist, who was advising her patients to …

There is a small private liberal arts college here in the com­munity, not un­usual at all in Ohio as this state used to have the highest con­cen­tra­tion of four-year private colleges in the United States. Like many small private liberal arts colleges built in the nineteenth century, it has a scenic campus, a portion of which also serves as an arboretum. A few years ago, a family donated money to install a labyrinth on one of the expanses of lawn …