“Did your other doctor talk to you about your cytogenetics?” My current doctor, a myeloma specialist, asked me this while giving me a second opinion on my diag­nosis.

It was the first time I’d ever heard the term cytogenetics. My doctor ex­plained that I had a “del17” chromosomal ab­nor­mal­ity, which made my dis­ease “high risk” and poten­tially more aggressive than that of the majority of other multiple myeloma patients. Two years later, I under­stand this concept better, but occa­sionally my …

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was 13 years old, and sitting in my 7^th grade math class behind a popular girl with perfect hair. The lesson was on a topic that would have served me better in years to come, but I couldn’t hear it because I was distracted by the perfectly-feathered person sitting in front of me.

Why was this girl so popular? Was it her hair? Her cool, acid-washed jean jacket? Her perfectly scrunched leg warmers? I …

I was recently grousing about the individualized nature of multiple mye­lo­ma. In this modern day, we have some cancers that are curable, and many that are so predictable in their course that treatment is standardized.

Multiple myeloma is not either of those types of cancers. What works for you will not work for me and vice versa. Some of you started with MGUS or smoldering myeloma. Some of you may never advance beyond that. Others, and I am in …

During my 25-year career as a boy’s head basketball coach, I found the most satisfying (and most important) part of coaching was planning and devising game plans. 

Putting my knowledge and experience to test to give my teams the best chance of winning was challenging and time consuming, but also enjoyable and exciting. Equally enjoyable and exciting was making adjustments to the game plan during the course of the game.

At times the game plan worked to perfection. Sometimes, the plan …

In my pre-myeloma days, I didn't think much about hair or hats. I was surprised to find out how much this changed in the months during and after my stem cell transplant.

My previously bushy hair had become pretty thin before the transplant due to the treatment with cyclophosphamide (Cytoxan), which I was given to ‘encourage’ the stem cells to leave the marrow so they could be collected from my blood.

Perhaps, given this hair thinning, I ought to have …

We are having a real winter this year, and right now there is a lot of snow every­where. It is very pretty and fun to walk around in, but has caused problems with traffic and meant that my husband is doing lots of shoveling. I used to shovel the walks, but had to give that up after my multiple myeloma diagnosis in 2009. I used to like gardening too, but nowadays I can only do light weeding, planting, and watering …

You may recall from my last column that I was holding my breath. That was because I had a seemingly ominous test result that created some con­cern.

To recap a bit, for several years I have had an M-Spike that my doctor and I believe to be secondary monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS). Assuming that we are correct – and all of the other test results seem to bear out that assumption – this M-spike is not a bad thing; …