A very close friend of long standing recently chided me, after reading my most recent column, for being too busy and doing too much. Of course I would be fatigued if I didn’t cut back. Didn’t I understand that?

I read her letter, set it down, and sighed. “It’s not the fatigue that’s the problem,” I said to my husband, Warren.

“I know.”

But how to convey that to my friend clearly and cleanly?

I finally came up with three check-off categories: Tired. Fatigued. None of the Above.

“Tired” is …

In September, I wrote about a planned meeting with my myeloma specialist and what that might reveal about the effective­ness of my current treat­ment of Darzalex (dara­tumu­mab). Two weeks before the road trip to Minnesota to meet with my specialist, I’d finished the first part of the regi­men, which was one in­fusion one time a week for eight weeks.

My husband and I compressed this road trip more than usual, both coming and going. A close friend’s memorial service took the Saturday we’d normally have used for driving and visiting family. All …

Back in November, 2014, I wrote a column about the book Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. It is a book that many of you have read; it has also been discussed in other columns by other Beacon columnists. I still encourage lots of people (well, everyone, pretty much) to read it.

Right now, this book and my response to it are very much on my mind.

I just finished my first eight weeks of treatment with Darzalex (dara­tu­mu­mab). I will soon visit my myeloma specialist for a quarterly checkup, and my …

In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the first of the Oz series, any traveler to the Emerald City must put on a pair of green spectacles, which are then locked in place. These are required to shade one’s eyes from the brilliant green glow.

In Cancerland, the color of the glasses is rose.

After a holiday from treatment of almost two months – longer than my myeloma specialist wanted, but shorter than Tim, my primary oncologist, wanted – I resumed treatment in mid July.

My new treatment regimen is Darzalex (daratumumab). The pre­scribed …

One of the things I do at juvenile court is facilitate a class in helping juveniles develop their aware­ness of the larger world (as opposed to being focused solely on them­selves). One exercise my colleagues and I have them do is to pay it forward: doing some act of kindness for some­one else without any expectation of reward. You don’t have to spend money, we tell them. Small acts are okay too.

It is an exercise I often carry around in my head and heart. Most recently, I carried it to …

A major portion of my job as mediator at our juvenile court is holding attendance mediations in the four school districts and career center in this county. The school year around here runs mid-August to late May. I am in the schools medi­ating by late September and go until mid-May as a rule. The busiest months are December through April.

My coworkers and I have come to call this period of time “the attendance season.” “I’m sorry, it’s attendance season and I can’t cover that hearing for you,” one of them will …

A hot topic in my coffee klatch is com­pre­hensive cancer care. Mark, our ring­leader and the healthiest of the bunch, constantly brings our con­versa­tion round to that con­cept.

(For the record, there are four of us in the klatch, three of whom have cancer, and the fourth of whom has some mysterious debili­tating chronic illness, or com­bi­nation of illnesses, that has stumped several major medical insti­tu­tions.)

Mark’s passion is connecting the dots between oncology and com­pre­hensive care. So he often poses a series of questions when we meet.

Which …