I like to communicate with my doctors by email.

Having spent a great deal of my career talking on the phone, the embracing of email in the work world has had a profound change in the way I do business.   Once upon a time, I might spend as much as two-thirds of the day on the phone.  Today, there’s an awful lot of time between phone calls.  Sometimes a whole workday goes by.

Anyway, it’s not always easy – sometimes it’s impossible – to get a doctor to agree to email communication.  …

Everybody reacts differently, I’ve learned, to the challenges that come with a multiple myeloma diagnosis.

What I might dislike or find annoying may not be so troublesome to someone else. Similarly, things that may not bother me much, if at all, can be hugely vexing to others.

Sometimes, as patients, we can be drawn into situations by our disease where we aren’t sure exactly what to expect. Most of us, I think, take these things in stride, and grin and bear it. Well, maybe not always grin, but as most cancer patients …

One of the things I think I know is that multiple myeloma is often harder on caregivers than it is on the person with the disease.

To some, that may seem counter-intuitive. You’d probably consider that the person with the disease is the one confronting the harder road to travel on, but I believe such a perspective ignores the turmoil, the emotional roller-coaster. and the uncertainty that caregivers face.

I don’t mean to diminish the impact of what becomes an endless life-and-death battle with disease for those with myeloma. I do think, …

I was thinking the other day about mortality. By no means am I obsessed with this, but a thought process about one’s own mortality is, for me at least, sometimes unavoidable, given a life-shortening multiple myeloma diagnosis.

There doesn’t seem to be much written – there’s some – about the psychic impact of living with a disease that’s pretty much always fatal, and one where you don’t really have a clue when your myeloma will turn on you and go from “manageable” to untreatable. From comments I’ve heard from patients, I know …

I don’t know about you, but I’m not too clear-headed about the appointment where I got my initial myeloma diagnosis.

First of all, I suppose I should have taken it as an ominous sign when the hematologist/oncologist’s office called me and asked if I could be there in an hour.

Basically, this is really all I recall:

We went into the exam room, and the doctor sat on his little wheeled stool. Linda (my wife) and I sat in two chairs in front of him.

Doctor: You have …

One of the universal bits of advice you’re going to get as a patient with multiple myeloma is that you need a good relationship with your doctor.

In a recent article, patient Kay Cromie of Burlington, Vermont, stressed to Myeloma Beacon writer Saniya Tabani the importance of developing a rapport with your doctor, so you can feel comfortable communicating your concerns, asking questions, and discussing treatment options with your doctor.

When I spoke a few weeks ago with Dr. Sergio A. Giralt at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, he said every patient …

Back in 2006, when I was initially diagnosed with myeloma, I learned of the interest among researchers in investigating maintenance therapies, particularly a Revlimid (lenalidomide)/dexamethasone (Decadron) combination.

This struck me at the time as an encouraging and exciting development, particularly for anyone who had paid attention to how a similar line of research and the introduction of protease inhibitors and combination therapies have changed the lives of many persons living with HIV/AIDS over the past 15 years.

I thought it would be great if someone said to me, “Hey, …