As happens with most myeloma patients, my diag­nosis was delayed. There were signs of the disease that, in retro­spect, should have prompted further in­vesti­ga­tion. But, because of my and my doctors’ un­fa­mil­iar­i­ty with the disease, we did not do the test­ing necessary for a diag­nosis until there had been bone damage.

This is not unusual. The type of bone pain myeloma causes is easily con­fused with a host of mus­cu­lo­skel­e­tal prob­lems that are frequently treated with chiro­practic or physical therapy regimens.

Once the real diag­nosis comes in, many of us kick …

It was appointment day, and my husband Daniel and I rode in thought­ful silence as we neared the hospital. Neither one of us felt like talk­ing, nor did we make banal chit-chat, a small com­fort from knowing one another so well. He drove more ag­gres­sive­ly than usual, dodg­ing in out of traffic like Mario Andretti in his final lap. I grasped the door handle, but I said noth­ing, which for me was not usual.

My thoughts ran to his ap­point­ment, and maybe his did too. “Did the hemo­globin levels hold, or will we get …

When I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2005, my specialist told me that my disease fell into the category of smoldering myeloma.

This meant that, while I had abnormal myeloma cells in my bone marrow and abnormal protein in my blood, the myeloma wasn’t yet harming me. I didn’t have any other symptoms, such as anemia, bone damage, or kid­ney involvement. I’d have my blood tested every few months, but I didn’t need any treatment.

My first reaction to the smoldering diagnosis was one of intense relief. After a month of …

There are several analogies that are used to describe our ex­peri­ences liv­ing with multiple myeloma. The most common appear to be a battle, a jour­ney, or chap­ters in a book.

The analogy that currently resonates the most with me is the one of chap­ters in a book.

The titles of each chapter of my multiple myeloma book are pretty obvious: Diag­nosis, Radi­a­tion Treat­ment, Watch and Wait, Induction Ther­apy, and Autol­o­gous Stem Cell Trans­plant. The next chapter of my book will be entitled ‘Maintenance Therapy.’

In this column, I would like to share …

One of my many niche skills is that I know how to design, plan, and draft the legal foundation – motions, rules, procedures, and manuals – of what we in Ohio call "specialized dockets."

A specialized docket is also called a treatment court. There are different kinds of specialized dockets, each of which focuses on one class of offenders who all share a non-criminal trait that causes them to break the law.

Overall, these special courts are intended to offer "a therapeutically ori­ented judicial approach to providing court supervision and appropriate treatment to individuals." …

I would like to address a topic that almost all of us with multiple myeloma have to deal with at one point or another – when to get a stem cell trans­plant.

Many of you reading this have been through this procedure already. It is often prescribed soon after diagnosis for patients with advanced myeloma. Most of these folks didn’t have much choice in the matter; it was something that needed to be done urgently to give them the best chance of survival.

Others – and I am in this second camp …

I have been living with multiple myeloma for almost six years now, and I am grateful that, after a period of initial treatment,  I have had the oppor­tun­ity to get back to a nearly normal life again.

You might think that, after such a long time, I needn’t worry about the future, or become stressed about the disease sometimes, but that is not always the case.

My relapse last autumn and subsequent return to treatment on the stron­gest dosage of Revlimid (lenalidomide) plus weekly dexa­meth­a­sone (Deca­dron) was a reminder …