On a morning walk recently, I was impressed by the brilliant blue sky and happy to see more people and their dogs out walking than there were in the really cold weather. Overhead, magpies were gathering twigs to build nests, Canada geese were honking as they look for nesting sites near the river, and woodpeckers were drumming into trees, power poles, and even roofs of houses. Snow geese have been seen flying north, and a porcu­pine was spotted walking on our street. It finally is springtime here in the foot­hills of the …

In February, I endured a record run of “lost days.”

If you are a cancer patient, you know what a lost day is. It is a day you feel groggy, unfocused, and you sleep a lot.

I can’t accomplish anything on a lost day. Really, I can’t remember many details of a lost day. This phenomenon could be due to a medical pro­cedure, the myeloma treatments I receive, or even trauma.

For four months, I would experience a lost day every Monday. This is the day I receive Darzalex (dara­tu­mumab) plus Velcade …

It’s been two years since my multiple myeloma diagnosis and the begin­ning of this journey. So much has happened since then.

When you watch events day-to-day, it’s easy to miss their significance – even in the case of big events. Given more perspective, however, the chal­lenges and changes become more clear, and I now recognize the many new begin­nings I’ve en­countered in my myeloma life.

In one of my pre­vious columns, I wrote about the challenging months fol­low­ing my initial diagnosis, when I faced debilitating fear and anxiety. I don’t know …

We live in a world today where everything is “on-demand.” We have television apps that show movies anytime we want to see them. We carry hand-held computers that can answer our every query while making an overseas call. Services exist to deliver anything we want at any hour, and we can even pay our bills while in the comfort of our living rooms.

Amidst all this “on-demand” life, it’s difficult for people to understand why they can’t do more for my husband Daniel’s smoldering myeloma. Well-meaning people look at me quizzically as …

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 …

In one of my previous columns, I promised to describe in more detail the days and weeks immediately following my stem cell transplant. I have read many accounts in The Beacon of this critical period in the transplant process. Everyone has to endure the ups and downs of recovery and the drawn-out wait for the bone marrow to start producing all the blood cells that we need. It seems that this time is different for every multiple myeloma patient.

I can vividly remember the moment when the pink bag of stem cells …

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 …