Since my family have jobs in the health care field, I tend to hear a lot about med­i­cal problems.

I therefore had heard of multiple myeloma before my own diagnosis. Even though I knew of some people who had this disease, I have to admit that I didn’t know much about it, except that it is a blood cancer.

After receiving my diagnosis, the number of people with myeloma I heard about sky­rock­eted, since everybody around me seemed to go out of their way to tell me about their loved ones …

Having recently been discharged from the hospital after my third cycle of high-dose chemo, I was at the outpatient clinic at the hospital recently on a Saturday for lab work and a checkup.

The medical tech who was drawing my blood was a woman I have come to know.  She has seen me walking in, dragging myself in, and being wheeled in through years of treatment.  She has seen me through two stem cell transplants, a donor transplant, multiple rounds of chemo, and countless rounds of myeloma treatments.

While accessing my port, …

Before I get started, I want to share good news about my ongoing myeloma therapy.

If you recall, after a recent relapse, my doctors and I had decided to try adding Revlimid (lenalidomide) to my doublet of Velcade (bortezomib) and dexa­meth­a­sone (Decadron) one last time, hoping it might still work.  Although it has only been two months, the combination does seem to be helping; my M-spike has dropped from 0.5 g/dL down to 0.4 g/dL, or 20 percent.

But enough about me!

I recently heard from …

It’s an early March evening here in Little Rock, Arkansas, and I’m waiting to be called in for my PET scan.

I’m writing this month’s article slowly because some of my close friends back home in Missouri don’t read very fast.

Originally scheduled as a six-month follow-up examination in December, my appointment has been postponed three times. First, there was a change in my new primary doctor’s availability, followed by my lengthy bout with influenza in January, and then I was stranded at my home by a dangerous winter ice storm …

I am going to tell you something you have probably heard before, but which you may not have fully internalized.

You are in charge of your disease.

Absent mental defect or court order, you simply cannot delegate de­ci­sions about your care to anyone else; not a medical professional, not a spouse, not a friend, not a parent.

If you are going to live with multiple myeloma, you have to own the dis­ease.  You must educate yourself about it, and you have to make deci­sions about your care that, while either right or …

What would you do if suddenly, out of the blue, your myeloma just – poof! –disappeared?

I know many people achieve remission after treatment, but what if – after having stable but measurable disease for years – it simply vanished for no reason?

A few months ago, I called the doctor’s office to get my latest test results. The nurse said she couldn’t find the results for my M-spike (monoclonal protein). This has happened before, so I wasn’t worried. I felt fine and all of my other numbers were normal, so I’d …

As I wrestle with the early treatment phase of this disease, it is my hope that by shar­ing my experiences I can provide some valuable insights to readers who are newly diagnosed and beginning treatment.

But before sharing in this column what I have been through as I finish the fifth cycle of treatment, I have two confessions to make.

First, treatment is tough, really tough -- far tougher than I ever imagined it would be. My approach to treatment was naively ignorant despite warn­ings from my doctor and all that I …