"They put me on some routine blood tests and it showed up in there," said Karen Crowley, a proud mother and writer of the blog “The Adventures of Cancer Girl.” “I didn’t even feel sick, and all of a sudden, I had cancer.”

Crowley was diagnosed in November 2005 with smoldering myeloma – a type of myeloma that advances slowly and exhibits no symptoms. As a relatively healthy 34-year-old woman, Crowley had never heard the term “multiple myeloma” until she received her unexpected diagnosis.

By using resources like the Multiple Myeloma Research Consortium (MMRC) Web site, the ACOR email list for multiple myeloma, and Google, Crowley managed to quickly overcome her unfamiliarity with the diagnosis. While learning and updating her knowledge on multiple myeloma Crowley even became addicted to Facebook after finding some multiple myeloma groups within the online community.

Although Crowley quickly caught up on the medical and scientific reports through Web sites, she still lacked one type of information: actual experiences from fellow patients.

“I wanted to read a lot of personal stories to find out what it was like to have myeloma and I couldn’t find that,” said Crowley. The search proved to be even more difficult because Crowley tried to locate patients who were in their thirties, when in reality, 75 percent of multiple myeloma diagnoses are made in patients over the age of 70. “So I decided: well, if I make my own blog, I can find [personal stories].”

As Crowley continued to write and publish new posts on her blog, she found that it kept her family updated on her condition while serving as an outlet - keeping herself from dwelling on negative feelings.

However, Crowley accepted that the diagnosis has drastically changed her life.

“I guess before the diagnosis, I kind of thought that I was guaranteed to have a long and happy life… It just kind of made me see that you’re not really guaranteed that your life is going to be perfect,” said Crowley. Instead, she now believes that “you can try and make [your life] as good as you can.”

But with pastel polka dots decorating her blog, Crowley rarely writes about such serious topics. Instead, her blog mostly focuses on her four-year-old daughter, whom she refers to as the World’s Cutest Kid, or WCK. Crowley fills her blog page with entries about Hannah Montana - WCK’s latest obsession - and scans of WCK’s doodles. Overall, “The Adventures of Cancer Girl” reflects Crowley’s dedication to her role as a mother rather than a patient. Actually, looking at the blog, it’s hard to tell that the diagnosis has affected Crowley or WCK’s life in any discernible manner.

“[WCK] does know. She has gone to the doctors with me and seen them draw blood, and she knows there’s something wrong with my blood so the doctor has to check it and make sure that it’s healthy. I don’t know if she thinks all mommies do that, because her whole life I’ve had this so she doesn’t see it as anything unusual,” said Crowley, lightly laughing and brightening up at the mention of her daughter. Even with Crowley’s medication and frequent visits to the doctor’s office, “[WCK] is only four, and like I said, I never had any symptoms and so she never saw me sick. So she does not think of me as sick and I don’t think of myself as sick either.”

For more information on Karen Crowley and her daughter, WCK, please see her blog “The Adventures of Cancer Girl.”