No two ways about it. I wasn’t smiling.

You’d think that, after having endured the kind of challenges that we multiple myeloma patients face during our illnesses, I would have learned not to sweat the little inconveniences that life seems to relish throwing my way.

You’d think that, but I can recall an out-of-state trip for a myeloma checkup five years ago during which I greatly overestimated my ability to ‘go with the flow.’

On the busy first day of an evaluation, there is usually a full dance card of imaging scans, …

Let me get this out of the way right at the outset: I am a for­tu­nate person.

It is true that I have an incurable cancer. At the time of my initial diag­nosis, I was suffering from pretty significant bone pain, especially in my ribs. And during the six months of my induction treat­ment, I dealt with some un­pleas­ant side effects, especially the crazi­ness and sleep­less­ness caused by dexamethasone (Dec­a­dron).

I went through a stem cell transplant, which was taxing, brought on severe fa­tigue, and caused painful gastrointestinal side effects. …

Last week my husband Daniel and I returned home after his regular ap­point­ment with his myeloma specialist. As we collapsed into the couch, we began our de­compression ritual of channel surfing and I caught one of my favorite movies: A River Runs Through It.

The movie is about Norman Maclean and his free-spirited brother Paul, who grow up in rural Montana in the 1920s. Their father, a Presbyterian minister, believed “that there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing,” and so it was amidst the panoramic views of nature that Norm spends …

Last week, my daughter came home from an over­night stay at Girl Scout camp with a runny nose. I chalked it up to al­lergies triggered by a night in the woods, but by the next night she was run­ning a fever.

The pediatrician reassured me it was just a virus and it would run its course in a few days. It did, but in the mean­time, she spent a couple of days on the couch watching the Disney Channel.

Like a typical kid, she bounced back, and every­thing was okay.

Everything was …

On the day this June that marked the one-year anniversary of my autol­o­gous stem cell transplant, Relay For Life, the fundraiser for the American Cancer Society, held a local event on our school campus. This is the fourth year that the event has been held on the campus of the school district for which I am super­intendent. I made a point of checking in with the organizers daily in the days leading up to the event to make sure that they had everything they needed to stage another successful relay.

As I …

Who among us has not received advice as to cures, nostrums, and pan­a­ceas?

Who among us has not received more tips on secret remedies than any B-movie bookie would give while running a numbers racket?

Who among us has not been told we should have gone to this doctor or that hospital (never the one we are going to) or that it is too bad we have myeloma because the speaker knows someone – a spouse, a parent, a fifth cousin, a neighbor, a celebrity – who died of a non-specific cancer, …

I have been diagnosed with a terminal disease.

So have many of you. If you’re reading this, you mostly likely at least know somebody who has a terminal disease. The vast majority of you are di­rect­ly affected by this “terminal” diagnosis.

I think whoever came up with this term should get a linguistic award. "Ter­mi­nal" sounds like a very serious word, without all the hassle of the word "death."

Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not trying to make light of death or to spin a humorous anecdote out of it.

What I want …