As I mentioned in my last column, my husband and I have recently returned to our home in Scotland after having lived in Southeast Asia for many years. It is lovely to be back home, and I really appreciate being able to be outside in the fresh, clean, Scottish air.

One of the very first things which we have done since returning is build a summer house at the top of our garden. This little summer house gives me a place to sit amongst the trees, looking out onto the outstanding …

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 …

I have been busy at home here with gardening, childcare, office work, and craft­ing. I nevertheless decided to make some time and read some books that I had been interested in for some time now.

I am glad that I did spend some quality time reading, in between other activities. Perhaps the fact that we are near the summer solstice now and thus have a lot of daylight makes it easier on the eyes to read! By reading just a chapter or two a day, one can finish a book in …

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 …

Two weeks ago, I was on top of my game. I was training for a sprint triathlon, joined a masters swim team, and participating in a strength class.

A little history: I have been a participant in the Roaring Fork Women’s Tri­athlon Team for 18 years. We meet twice a week, in the summer, for coach­ing and training. For me, it is my adult summer camp. Besides, this team has been phenomenally supportive to me through the ups and downs of my disease. I was particularly excited about the upcoming summer because …

April marked nine months since my autologous stem cell transplant and the beginning of another cycle of maintenance therapy.

Complete labs are drawn at the beginning of each treatment cycle. As usual, I received an email a few days later that included the latest lab results. I im­medi­ately scrolled to the bottom of the report to look at my M-spike. Instead of num­bers, this time I saw letters: “Too small to quantify.”

That was the first time since my diagnosis two years ago that I’ve had no measurable M-spike. My reaction to this …

It was February 1971, and Estelle Prather, wife of Edwin Prather, mother of two, and small business owner, was by Ed’s bedside in Houston, Texas. Earlier that year, they had left their business and children to others and made the five-hour trip to check Ed into the best cardiac hospital in the state. For weeks, a Houston hospital room was their home.

Cardiologists had found a previously undiagnosed heart murmur. With two leaves of his heart completely deteriorated and one leaf deformed, Ed was in bad shape. The good news was that …