It was New Year’s Eve 2008, and I was hunkered down in a small one-bedroom apartment that I’d rented in Little Rock during my ten-month clinical trial for mul­ti­ple myeloma.

My wife Karen was splitting her time between looking after me in Arkansas and being with our two young daughters – and keeping her teaching job – back home in Missouri. I hadn’t seen the kiddos since I’d begun my medical ad­ven­tures nearly a month earlier.

Having spent the Christmas holidays with family in Chicago, the girls were excited to venture south to Little …

For my birthday a few months ago, my husband got me a Fitbit. I’m ob­sessed with it.

A Fitbit is a small device you wear inside a band that goes around your wrist. It has magical powers and can tell when you’re walking or running, and it tracks your activity throughout the day. The goal is to take at least 10,000 steps every day.

Once you hit 10,000 steps, the Fitbit lights up and buzzes happily. When you sync your device to the Fitbit web site after hitting 10,000 steps, you’re rewarded …

Earlier this month, I admitted something that wasn’t easy for me: I’m refractory to both Revlimid and Velcade.

So what’s the big deal?  There are plenty of other drugs I haven’t tried.

True, my outlook isn’t as dire as it would have been three or four years ago.  I recall attending a pre­sen­ta­tion at the American Society of Hema­tol­ogy’s 2011 annual meeting in San Diego. Pomalyst and Kyprolis weren’t approved yet by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. But a panel of international myeloma experts, including the IMF’s Dr. Brian Durie, French hematologist Dr. …

One month ago, I was discharged from the hospital after having a stem cell transplant, so I obviously am not lacking for material to write about in this col­umn.

As I reflect back on my experiences, I can't help but remember a chance en­coun­ter that I had with another myeloma patient who I met at my last Zometa (zole­dron­ic acid) treatment three weeks before my transplant.

On this particular day, the chemo wing at the cancer center was very busy and I shared a room with another gentleman. He was …

“Futbol,” or soccer as it’s known on this side of the pond, is really catch­ing on in the United States.

Over the last few weeks, many Americans, myself included, have been riveted to our televisions as we cheered for team USA in the FIFA World Cup.

It seems that soccer fever is so pervasive that even the clergy have not been spared the affliction. I recently heard a minister discuss in his sermon the dif­fer­ent styles of play of the World Cup teams. The minister also pointed out that we could learn something from …

Do you ever wonder if you’re getting all you can get out of life? As multiple myeloma patients, this question is both timely and important to our ability to cope with this disease.

As I mentioned in my first column last month, I am a 51-year-old man who was diagnosed with early-stage multiple myeloma just over two years ago.

My experience was a little atypical in that I didn’t have any bone lesions or other signs of cancer prior to my diagnosis. Instead, I had a recurring and somewhat regular bout …

We have been trying to plan a small vacation. The operative phrase here is “small.”

A friend of ours is getting married in August in a Monday evening cere­mony in the Cincinnati area. That means an overnight stay and puts us about 120 miles south of our front door. At the end of the same week, we need to be in Chicago for two nights of concerts, including a world premiere.

Those two events, bookends to the week, pretty much chop the work week into little tiny pieces. So why not take …