As another summer in the Foothills enfolds, with warm weather, brilliant flowers, sunshine and showers, and the relaxed atmosphere of outdoor living, I can only remember dimly how different the summer of 2009 was for me. I spent most of the summer of 2009 indoors. I was suffering from back pain and feeling very sick after being diagnosed with Stage 3 myeloma in July of that year.

I was very worried about my future. Receiving a cancer diagnosis is not anything anyone would like to have to deal with. And to …

The July 4^th holiday is behind us. I spend it in Iowa City, harvesting stem cells for my upcoming autologous stem cell transplant.

To review, after my fourth relapse – and a number of short-lived therapy options that would only work for months, not years – I made the difficult decision to try a salvage auto transplant, but only because it was going to be modified, as I described in my April column. I had a failed transplant four years ago. The best I got out of it was some resensitization; …

In December of every year, we are inundated with “year in review” lists. The best movies and music albums; notable marriages and deaths; advances in medicine and science. Frankly, I never have been much interested in reviewing the past, choosing instead to look ahead.

But in thinking about the two years since I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma at the end of June 2013, I see that much can be learned from looking back at my experiences, including what I have done right and what I’ve done wrong.

I have captioned this …

I was thinking recently about a challenge that comes up reg­u­larly in my pro­fes­sional role as a learning consultant and instructional designer.

I am hired to develop corporate training materials, and one of my responsibilities is helping clients identify the key learning objectives for their training projects.

This aspect of my work got me wondering: If I were to consult with myeloma pa­tients and their families, what learning objectives would I recommend for them? What skills do they need the most?

One of the most important things a myeloma patient can do …

I have a 10-year-old daughter, which means I’ve seen the Disney Channel movie High School Musical many, many times. I’m not sure how many times; I’ll just say I’ve seen it more times than any mentally healthy person really should.

If you don’t have a 10-year-old living in your house, I’ll sum up the plot: The movie is about a group of high school students who are all in a musical.

At the very end of the movie, they decide they’ve all become friends via said musical, and they perform an extravagant …

A recent event gave me food for thought.

I started writing this column exactly one year from the date I was ad­mitted to under­go an autol­o­gous stem cell trans­plant. Coinci­dentally, my latest three-month check-up occurred on that very same day. I have not been one who believes that a new life begins with a transplant, replete with the cele­bra­tion of new birth­days, so I have not made a big deal of this one-year anni­ver­sary.

However, the fact that it often takes up to a year (or longer) to determine a …

As I wrote last month, in early June I went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minne­sota, at the suggestion of my on­col­o­gist to get a second opinion on my cancer.

There are many ways to tell the same story.

This is one way. I have relapsed. The myeloma is pro­gress­ing at the same in­ex­orable glacial pace that has marked it for the last decade. I have stopped tak­ing Revlimid (lena­lido­mide) and will begin Kyprolis (car­filz­o­mib) at some un­de­ter­mined date.

There are many ways to tell the same …