“Daddy, do you remember that Christmas when you were bald?” my eight-year old daughter Lizzie recently asked me.

Until that point we had been talking about the eagles that occasionally glided in the skies above the lake next to our home in the Ozarks of southwestern Missouri.

“Uh… yes,” I chuckled, amused at her segue from bald eagles to the cue-ball that I had donned three years earlier during my chemotherapy treatments for myeloma. “Do you remember when I was bald?”

“Yeah, of course I do. There’s a goofy picture of you …

In just a few short weeks, millions of folks across the U.S. will travel over-the-river-and-through-the-woods to gather with family and friends during one of the nation’s most beloved holidays - Thanksgiving!

My family is no different. We love Thanksgiving! I can see it now:

On Thanksgiving morning, through the magic of television, we will be whisked away to The Big Apple to clap along with rousing marching bands, to ‘oooo’ over the helium-filled superhero balloons, and to ‘ahhh’ over the masterfully decorated motorized floats of the this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. …

The tiny room was spinning like an off-kilter gyroscope. I grabbed the sides of the chair with the hope that I would not fall off and further injure myself. The lights were interrogation-level bright as I closed my eyes to ward off an oncoming wave of nausea and a gnawing headache.  An unsettling buzzing near my left ear was growing in intensity as I realized that the point of no return was close at hand.

“Last chance. I don’t want to hurt you if I don’t have to. Sure you want me …

A reader recently asked me to share how I have remained ‘positive’ in my fight with multiple myeloma. My story is, perhaps, not much different than yours.

When multiple myeloma so rudely interrupted things in my happy corner of the universe, it had a surprisingly ‘positive’ effect on my life.

Positive? Yeah, right! Now don’t get me wrong. I hate everything about cancer. I hate the chaos, the hardship, the abject fear that it can cause. I hate how cancer can turn normal lives completely upside-down. And I especially detest myeloma. I …

I have a dream.

Better yet, I have dreams – plural. I’m not talking about profoundly inspiring dreams like those of Martin Luther King or amazingly prophetic dreams like Joseph, the son of Jacob, had. Unfortunately, I’m not that deep of a thinker.

Maybe it would be more accurate to say: ‘I have daydreams.’

My daydreams seem to launch themselves at times of boredom, extreme fatigue, or when I need a diversion from a task at hand.

Like when I am in the middle of an MRI, for instance.

About a year …

Here’s a question you’ve probably never seen: How is multiple myeloma like a yellow Volkswagen Beetle? Read on! 

I will never forget the day that I was unceremoniously plunged into the perplexing world of multiple myeloma.

It was an early afternoon in mid November 2008, and I was at home with a backache that I couldn’t seem to get rid of.  My phone rang, and in his stoic, matter-of-fact tone, my family doctor said that my severe pains were not the result of a pulled muscle or tweaked nerves (as I’d hoped), …

I have always been fascinated and inspired by stories of courage through adversity. In that vein, an event took place during a week in late May that gave me great pause to reflect upon how I deal with the reality of living with multiple myeloma.

On May 22, a monstrous tornado, 3/4 of a mile wide, 13.8 miles long, and packing winds in excess of 200 miles per hour, descended upon Joplin, Missouri, a town just an hour to the west of my small community. The EF-5 tornado killed 142 people, injured …