Last week, my daughter came home from an over­night stay at Girl Scout camp with a runny nose. I chalked it up to al­lergies triggered by a night in the woods, but by the next night she was run­ning a fever.

The pediatrician reassured me it was just a virus and it would run its course in a few days. It did, but in the mean­time, she spent a couple of days on the couch watching the Disney Channel.

Like …

On the day this June that marked the one-year anniversary of my autol­o­gous stem cell transplant, Relay For Life, the fundraiser for the American Cancer Society, held a local event on our school campus. This is the fourth year that the event has been held on the campus of the school district for which I am super­intendent. I made a point of checking in with the organizers daily in the days leading up to the event to make sure that …

Who among us has not received advice as to cures, nostrums, and pan­a­ceas?

Who among us has not received more tips on secret remedies than any B-movie bookie would give while running a numbers racket?

Who among us has not been told we should have gone to this doctor or that hospital (never the one we are going to) or that it is too bad we have myeloma because the speaker knows someone – a spouse, a parent, a fifth …

I have been diagnosed with a terminal disease.

So have many of you. If you’re reading this, you mostly likely at least know somebody who has a terminal disease. The vast majority of you are di­rect­ly affected by this “terminal” diagnosis.

I think whoever came up with this term should get a linguistic award. "Ter­mi­nal" sounds like a very serious word, without all the hassle of the word "death."

Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not trying to make light of death …

As another summer in the Foothills enfolds, with warm weather, brilliant flowers, sunshine and showers, and the relaxed atmosphere of outdoor living, I can only remember dimly how different the summer of 2009 was for me. I spent most of the summer of 2009 indoors. I was suffering from back pain and feeling very sick after being diagnosed with Stage 3 myeloma in July of that year.

I was very worried about my future. Receiving a cancer diagnosis is …

The July 4^th holiday is behind us. I spend it in Iowa City, harvesting stem cells for my upcoming autologous stem cell transplant.

To review, after my fourth relapse – and a number of short-lived therapy options that would only work for months, not years – I made the difficult decision to try a salvage auto transplant, but only because it was going to be modified, as I described in my April column. I had a failed transplant four …

In December of every year, we are inundated with “year in review” lists. The best movies and music albums; notable marriages and deaths; advances in medicine and science. Frankly, I never have been much interested in reviewing the past, choosing instead to look ahead.

But in thinking about the two years since I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma at the end of June 2013, I see that much can be learned from looking back at my experiences, including what I …