Today, my husband Peter and I plan to “undecorate,” our household term for putting all the Christmas finery away.  It’s a bittersweet occasion, as I am one obsessed with the Christmas tree.  I take great joy in looking at our ornaments, so many of which hold very happy memories.

This year in particular I enjoyed placing the ornaments my sister Deana and I collected in December 1998, when she accompanied me on a work trip to Vienna, Budapest, Prague, and Munich.  We visited numerous Christmas markets in these cities – it was …

In the summer of 2009, six months before being diagnosed with multiple myeloma, my wife and I toured the Crater Lake area in Oregon by bicycle. 

The group we were in was small -- only four bikers -- as a third couple had bailed at the last minute, and we were in (hopefully) the deepest part of the Great Recession.  

On the last morning of the week-long trip, we began a 45-mile descent to our luncheon spot.  We were biking on isolated two-lane back roads, hemmed in by green forests.  Forestfires had been …

As an avid follower of Google alerts for multiple myeloma and a reader of all things multiple myeloma on the Internet, a recent article caught my attention.

“Novel Therapies Put Multiple Myeloma on the Ropes” read the headline from the Oncology Report Digital Network.

The article led off with the statement “A sweep of new agents are poised to deliver what could be a knockout blow to multiple myeloma."

It then quoted Dr. Jeffrey Wolf, the director of the multiple myeloma program at the University of California, San Francisco, saying "We have …

I learned this week that my post-stem cell transplant consolidation therapy is continuing to work.  But the side effects are becoming less predictable.

My monoclonal protein number — also known as M-spike — has been dropping ever since I began consolidation therapy with Revlimid (lenalidomide), Velcade (bortezomib), and dexamethasone (Decadron), commonly abbreviated as RVD.  After two 6-week treatment cycles, my numbers are back to where they were just before my autologous stem cell transplant.

As many of you know, my M-spike was 0.2 prior to undergoing a stem cell …

Happy New Year!

From the cozy warmth and comfort of our family room in the Midwest, my wife, daughters, and I vicariously celebrated the arrival of 2012 with no less than Dick Clark, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, and a million or so hale-and-hearty occupiers of New York City’s iconic Times Square.

While the nearly six ton Waterford Crystal Ball majestically dropped 77 feet during the final minute of 2011, the girls and I joined the choir of unison voices for the raucous countdown: 3-2-1! Happy New Year!

Time worked its magic. One …

When you read this, I will have rung in the New Year in Tampa, Florida, preparing to cheer on the University of Georgia Bulldogs in this year’s Outback Bowl.  In my 15 years at Georgia, this is how I have spent most New Year’s – which is a good thing actually, as it means that the football team did well enough to be bowl eligible.  A good football season is a good thing indeed.

Last year, I spent Christmas with my family in Pittsburgh and then raced to Memphis for the Liberty …

I wish my doctors talked with each other.

Not all of them, just the main ones:  My two oncologists, my primary care physician, and my nephrologist.  Those are the doctors that I see regularly.

Sometimes they send each other their notes from my most recent visit, although I’m not sure this happens efficiently all the time.  On top of that, I suspect that these office visit notes don’t get read until I pop up in the queue for an appointment with one of those doctors.  That could be weeks, even months later. …