Last week I returned home after spending 16 days hospitalized in the Moffitt Cancer Center’s Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) Treatment Unit, followed by seven days as an outpatient.

I wanted to wait a week until I felt better and gained some perspective before I shared details with you about my experience undergoing a stem cell transplant as treatment for my relapsed multiple myeloma.

But as it turns out, I’m not the story.  The story is the dozens of fellow stem cell transplant patients I met along the way.

Some of them were …

We are all here because of advances in myeloma treatments. We have been given time. Some say we “buy” it—exchange the experience of chemical therapy for time to adapt and grow in the shadow of myeloma. Illness is pushed back so that we can carry on our lives.

I have recently encountered someone who is researching patient survival stories in an effort to write a book that offers hope for the terminally ill, a prognosis that is degrading and not particularly scientific.

The mind is a powerful aspect of health, especially when …

As I finish the outpatient phase of my stem cell transplant, I have been receiving a bunch of emails asking for advice about when and how to go about getting a second opinion about one’s myeloma treatment.

I believe that a newly diagnosed multiple myeloma patient should always try to get a second opinion.  But I also believe a myeloma patient should consider seeking a second opinion anytime their oncologist/hematologist suggests a major treatment shift.

For example, maybe you are on a certain treatment regimen.  But your monoclonal protein numbers have been …

We myeloma patients spend a lot of time in and at hospitals.

Hospitals are places where wonderful things happen – lives are saved, the ill are made well, and worn-out bodies are restored – much due to what the cliché refers to as “miracles of modern medicine.”

There’s another side to hospitals, though, that demands wariness and requires that you pay the greatest attention to what’s going on around you.  Pat Killingsworth wrote about one aspect of this last week in Pat’s Place: Poor Communication Can Cost A Myeloma Patient Time And …

Hello again from the bone marrow transplantation inpatient unit at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa.

I learned yesterday that I will be discharged today and move to outpatient housing. This is exciting news! I still have a long way to go, but with luck the worst is behind me.

I’m so relieved. I know my wife is, too. But now is not the time to relax.

There are dozens of little details to cover as I prepare to move into my new outpatient apartment.

The bone marrow transplantation inpatient and outpatient staff are excellent. But they …

For three years after my myeloma diagnosis and initial treatment in 2006, I continued to work a fairly full schedule as an ear, nose, and throat surgeon, seeing patients three days a week and doing surgery two days.  However, by design, my days were not nearly as full as before I had gotten sick. 

As I mentioned in my last post, after relapsing on Revlimid (lenalidomide) / dexamethasone (Decadron) two years ago, I started treatment with Velcade (bortezomib) twice a week. Since the Moffitt Cancer Center was right across …

If you didn’t read Sean’s Burgundy Thread: Myeloma & Shiny Yellow Volkswagens, do not let another minute pass before you do.  Sean did a far better job than I did in Me & My Big Mouth of bringing light to multiple myeloma versus the “common cancers,” with terrific evidence of what I alluded to – once you are in the multiple myeloma family, suddenly you find out there are a number of people you know who are, too!

Sean’s column also brought to light excellent statistical information about the number of new …