Between The Chapters

There is a strange emotional contradiction that can come with surviving cancer. You are grateful to be alive. And sometimes, you feel guilty because you are. Survivor’s guilt is something I have struggled with throughout my cancer journey. It can appear unexpectedly—a story about someone dying, another patient receiving bad news, a familiar name disappearing from the cancer community. Suddenly, the question creeps in: Why am I still here when they aren't? When I was first diagnosed with multiple myeloma, my future felt frighteningly uncertain. I had to make decisions about treatments and a stem cell transplant while trying to comprehend what it meant to have an incurable cancer. At the time, I wasn't thinking about surviving for years and years. I was thinking about surviving. I wanted more time. More time with my husband. More time with my children. More time with my granddaughters. More ordinary days that I hadn't realized were extraordinary until cancer threatened to tak...

March is Myeloma Awareness Month , so what better time to look back at the fascinating—and sometimes surprising—history of multiple myeloma? When we think about myeloma, we tend to think of modern medicine: bone marrow biopsies, M-proteins, light chains, chemotherapy, stem cell transplants, immunotherapy, CAR-T therapy, and all the other terms that become part of our vocabulary after diagnosis. But the disease itself is anything but new. Evidence suggests that a condition consistent with multiple myeloma may have existed thousands of years ago. The story of how doctors eventually recognized, named, diagnosed, and began treating it stretches across centuries. What Is Multiple Myeloma? Multiple myeloma is a cancer of plasma cells, a type of white blood cell found in the bone marrow. In myeloma, abnormal plasma cells multiply and can produce abnormal proteins that may be detected in the blood or urine. As those cells accumulate, they can interfere with the bone marrow's ability to pro...