Unexpected things can present tough choices that change the way you live. I sus­pect that most myeloma patients would agree. All myeloma patients have entered a doctor’s office as an “un­ini­ti­ated” (reg­u­lar person) and left as a cancer patient. That diag­nosis changes a person’s life forever, and in its wake there are many choices to be made: initial treat­ment regi­men, radi­a­tion, stem cell trans­plant, clin­i­cal trial par­tic­i­pa­tion, and more.

Over the past six weeks, the pandemic known as coronavirus dis­ease 2019, …

Coronavirus dis­ease 2019, or COVID‑19, has been all over the news here in Canada lately as the virus spreads to North America.

Fortunately, so far in Canada, the rate of infected and diag­nosed patients is still at a low level. In order to prevent the spread of COVID‑19, how­ever, large gather­ings have been cancelled.

The Juno's, Canada's annual music award cer­e­mony, were cancelled this month, and the National Hockey League (NHL) has suspended its season early. Even the Toronto …

As I write this, it’s been six weeks since I stopped my most recent myeloma treat­ment regi­men, the “last ditch” Velcade (bor­tez­o­mib), cyclo­phos­pha­mide (Cytoxan), and dexa­meth­a­sone (CyBorD) ther­apy that was sending my blood pres­sure dangerously high and doubling my pulse rate. I have met with my on­col­ogy team and they are okay with my de­ci­sion to choose qual­ity of life over the in­creas­ing misery of treat­ment.

I should note that my spouse and I agree that this is the …

The late great comedian George Carlin used to have a routine where he played a sportscaster doing the nightly sports report after having had one too many [you can fill in the blank]. About halfway through this routine, the loopy sportscaster would announce, “And here is a partial score from Yankee Stadium: New York 3.”

Huh? I chuckle when I think about that line because I believe that it so describes living with multiple myeloma.

Partial everything is how we …

I have struggled for a long time to accurately describe the physical feeling I have courtesy of multiple myeloma. I have written about that feeling in this column before, most recently in No­vem­ber 2017. In that column, I named the sensation “none of the above” (NOTA), a not sat­is­fac­tory description. In fact, over the years, it has been far easier to tell medical providers what I do not feel, starting with pain and nausea.

I think I …

Zero point seven. What is 0.7 to you? For most, it’s insignificant, a number be­tween 0 and 1. It’s a mere decimal. It’s not a com­plete whole, and yet it is more than nothing.

To me, it’s much, much more. It took us a long time to get to 0.7 g/dL (7 g/l).

In De­cem­ber, my husband Daniel’s M-spike reached this all-time low and we were en­cour­aged, for the first time in a long time. I started to wonder if we might get down to …

So, you have multiple myeloma.

Okay, let’s read that again. You and I have multiple myeloma. Cancer. Or, as I have heard it described, "The Big C". ("The Big C" in my childhood referred to the logo on a Cleveland Indians baseball cap; my, times have changed.)

Wow. Who would have thought or imagined?

Looking back over the first few years of a “having-cancer” life, I had to first ac­cept reality to move beyond that initial shock / surprise / desire to not …