The July 4^th holiday is behind us. I spend it in Iowa City, harvesting stem cells for my upcoming autologous stem cell transplant.

To review, after my fourth relapse – and a number of short-lived therapy options that would only work for months, not years – I made the difficult decision to try a salvage auto transplant, but only because it was going to be modified, as I described in my April column. I had a failed transplant four years ago. The best I got out of it was some resensitization; …

Boy, do I strike out on this one!

Yes, I thank God everyday for being alive.  And last night I took our dog, Finnegan, out for a midnight walk down to the beach under a glorious full moon.

But truth be told, I get too caught up in all I have to do every day.

There are advantages and disadvantages to working from home. Yes, I can get up and write in the shorts and T-shirts I slept in last night if I’m too lazy to get dressed. Forget shaving. I can …

Just when you think you’ve got this myeloma thing figured out, there’s so much to learn all over again.

Look­ing ahead, most of us have an idea about what we’d do when we start running out of FDA-approved drugs to help us: join a clinical trial. And there are literally hundreds of them for multiple myeloma patients.

So no worries, right? Simply pick one from column A, B, or C, and away we go. Hopefully, our doctor can help us find one that is likely to work for us and re­cruit­ing …

I’m fond of saying, “I still have a number of myeloma ther­a­py op­tions, but none of them are good.” The last part is a re­flec­tion of in­vesti­ga­tional work I’ve done speaking with a number of myeloma experts I know.

For two months, I’ve promised to share which direction my lovely wife, Pattie, and I have decided to go in terms of my next treat­ment. After six months of pros and cons lists, con­ver­sa­tions with readers, family, friends, and other myeloma sur­vivors, we’ve made a decision. We were em­bold­ened after shift­ing through piles of therapy and …

Last month I promised to share details of my new myeloma treatment plan. As I write this, I’m waiting to meet with a leading myeloma specialist at the University of Iowa for a second opinion.

I spent several days here undergoing extensive testing, including a bone marrow biopsy, PET scan, and MRI that looked at two thirds of my body and took an ex­cruciatingly long 80 minutes; that’s a long time to hold still!

I’m anxious to go over the genetic data that was collected from my biopsy, along with any insights …

An oncologist you’ve just met says you have multiple myeloma, an incurable cancer of the bone marrow. He or she reminds you that you aren’t a sta­tis­tic. “With luck,” your oncologist says, “You can live six or seven years — even longer. We should start treatment immediately.”

You and your caregiver frantically hit the Internet, hopefully viewing sites rec­om­mended by your doctor first. Overall survival statistics are all over the map: from three or four years to a decade or more.  Much of the survival disparity has to do with genetics.  Do you have chromosomal abnormalities, …

“Stay positive!” “Be hopeful!” “Don’t worry, one of the new drugs will work!”

Friends, family members – even people we meet for the first time on the street – all try to help keep our spirits up. A bit over-the-top, sometimes, but I try and be appreciative and not blame them for their naïveté.

No matter how hard we try, it’s impossible to stay positive and hopeful all of the time. Someone who’s chronically ill is going to have a bad day. Especially since the majority of us aren’t only chronically ill, we’re termi­nal, battling a …