My circle of creative-thinking friends once likened my up-and-down battle with multiple myeloma to being subjected to a series of wildly unpredictable storms.

I suppose that it’s true.

Using my friends’ template, I do sometimes find myself immersed in a rather serious medical situation akin to a violent assault of lightning, thunder, and torrential rains. At other times, I put up with a cold or infection that clings to me like a fog and nags me like an inconvenient drizzle.

Thankfully, there are stretches when I’m feeling good and the skies remain …

The great American writer E.B. White once began an essay, “I am a man of medium height.”

Those words echo in my head as I begin this introduction to my new column at The Myeloma Beacon. How do I put on paper in so many words who I am?

I am a woman of medium height, 5’8”, more or less, which probably makes me a little taller than E.B.  White was. I’ll be 57 years old come spring. I live in the middle of Ohio, having returned to my hometown in late …

Throughout 2012, multiple myeloma patients and caregivers have continued to graciously share their personal experiences with myeloma in columns they wrote for The Beacon.

In the past year, there was a new addition to The Beacon's columnists, who began her column describing the events leading up to her diagnosis. Several columnists took a chronological approach and wrote about their recent myeloma-related happenings, including recent lab results, changes to their current treatment regimen, or how they have been doing lately. 

Other columnist have written about their struggles with side effects, relapsing, and …

One of my favorite sayings is a Chinese proverb that I have previously quoted here, but it is worth mentioning again. “It is easy to get a thousand prescriptions, but hard to get one single remedy.”

Wandering through life with my partner, multiple myeloma, has been a call for just the right gifts to help me along. Finding what we need to thrive is a mysterious task – trusting that these right gifts will come our way may be the key to receiving them.

A Buddhist monk wears a robe and carries …

The end of this month marks my second anniversary since being diagnosed with multiple myeloma.  It's also the end of my induction therapy - a two-year clinical trial with Kyprolis (carfilzomib), Revlimid (lenalidomide), and dexa­metha­sone, commonly referred to as CRD, for newly diagnosed patients.

What a long, strange trip it's been - one I'll reflect on briefly for those who aren't familiar with it, then I'll pass along a few tidbits I picked up along the way, and finish with what's next.

By far, …

One of the things that having cancer has exposed me to is random acts of kindness.

I first encountered this concept from something the late Princess Diana once said:

"Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you."

Not everything about having cancer is bad.  Disgraced bicyclist Lance Armstrong, for example, perceived his cancer as “a gift.”

That’s because confronting a diagnosis that says, ‘Hey, maybe you’re going to die soon,’ can bring to many …

Except for three months following my stem cell transplant, I have continuously been on some type of chemotherapy for my multiple myeloma for over five years.  The relentless onslaught has caused a wide variety of side effects, some serious and others inconvenient.

I have been on Revlimid (lenalidomide) since soon after my diagnosis. It depresses my white blood cell counts to the point that I have experienced chronic neutropenia a number of times.  It has also aggravated a form of peripheral neuropathy (tingling in my lower extremities that slowly progressed to …