At the end of January, there was an eclipse of the Moon that was described by more adjectives than I have ever seen for one before: a “blue blood supermoon” eclipse.

The event brought to mind what was, for me, definitely one of the highlights of 2017, and one with obscure parallels to multiple myeloma: the August eclipse of the Sun.

I had to travel to the Pacific Northwest for a space conference that was scheduled to start the day after the eclipse and was situated near the path of …

Two of my roles are rather heavy on acronyms: being a space engineer and a cancer patient. NASA (itself an acronym, of course) is renowned for being fond of TLAs (three-letter acronyms). Sometimes this makes sense, as it can shorten long, tech­nical terms to manage­able length. However, some­times it actually has the opposite effect; for example, the acronym for the two-syllable word "pilot" is the three-syllable PLT.

In the cancer area, terms can again be quite con­voluted, so acronyms can help to simplify things. For instance, many of the treat­ments for multiple …

It was quite a surprise last month to see multiple myeloma mentioned on the front page of the New York Times. It was even “above the fold,” making it big news. Multiple myeloma usually only gets referred to in the paper in obit­u­aries, and then only rarely.

This mention of myeloma occurred in an article on the approval by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of an immunotherapy treatment to fight a form of leukemia. It was described as “the first-ever treatment that genetically alters a patient’s own cells …

The philosopher sportsman Yogi Berra once said: “It's tough to make pre­dic­tions, especially about the future.”

Of course, Berra also is quoted as saying “I never said most of the things I said,” so perhaps the quote about predictions is only apocryphal. It is, how­ever, one of his most famous sayings, alongside “It’s like déjà vu all over again” and “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

I would agree that it is certainly tough to make predictions when it comes to multiple myeloma, specifically concerning …

Randomness occurs in all aspects of life, but it sometimes seems to be particularly prevalent in multiple myeloma.

Several examples spring to mind. One is the wide variation between the behavior of the many different variants of myeloma. For no obvious reason apart from random chance, one person can have a variant that responds much better to treatment than does another.

Secondly, there is the question of the intensity of the side effects that are caused by treatment, in my case Revlimid (lenalidomide), dexa­metha­sone (Decadron), and Biaxin (clarithromycin).

I have …

It’s been so long now since I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma (11 years) that I sometimes forget that everyone around me isn’t in the same, or a similar, boat. This is particularly true given that it’s been so long since I was last in intensive treatment; I had my stem cell transplant 10 years ago in January. As a result, I generally feel like I’m trundling through life pretty much like everyone else, and I tend to forget that diseases like multiple myeloma are not all that widespread.

Occasionally, though, something comes …

Many people think of “It’s a Wonderful Life” as the most archetypal Christ­mas film. For me, however, the best holiday film is “A Christmas Carol,” and not just any version, but the 1951 one starring Alastair Sim.

Sim was in many famous British films from this period, and was quite an actor. His interaction as Scrooge with a boy outside, below his window, on Christmas morning is something that I could watch year after year. In fact, I do. To the inconvenience of my family, I have developed a tradition of …