In early June 2021, I received my diagnosis of multiple myeloma (MM). That news got my full attention until I received the ultimate gut punch that MM is a terminal disease. My oncologist told me I had five years to live, seven years on the outside, but if I started therapy, including a bone marrow transplant, I would gain an extra 10 years to my life. After that, I didn’t remember much of what we talked about. With a million thoughts racing through my mind, I answered, “Hell yes, I would start therapy.” That was the start of my journey with a blood cancer. For the next few long days, I was alternately pissed off at the world or so engulfed in self-pity, wondering what I had done to deserve this, that I was making myself sick. I finally came to the conclusion that there was no way I could live like this, and I had to make peace with my new reality to preserve my sanity as well as save my soul; besides, it was not going to cure my cancer. Knowing that my wife and daughter were already very scared of losing their husband and father, I realized that I had to be strong for all of us. At that point, I resolved to have a good attitude no matter how I was feeling, and to be positive about our future. Living with cancer is a complicated matter; on one hand, it’s a solitary, lonely battle, as you are the one who has to deal with the therapy and everything that goes with it, on the other hand, it affects your whole family, who grieve and suffer with you, so your attitude is of utmost importance. If you are always in a bad mood, difficult to live with, it reverberates through your whole family and care team. Nobody wants to be around a person who is constantly negative; this will only serve to drive them away, then where would you be when you need them the most? Now, four years later, I am doing great. I am on a maintenance schedule now, which means I go in for my blood tests every three months, and the last two electrophoresis tests have shown no monoclonal protein can be found. In English, it means they have not found any myeloma cells in my blood. This is great, awesome news, but hanging over all this is a very high probability that my cancer will return. I am not thinking that far ahead right now, just living in the moment and enjoying my life. Looking back at what I have been through these last four years, you would think it came from some Hollywood writer as I first had to deal with MM putting two lesions on my spine, one leading to a compression fracture in my lower back, the other on my neck, both removed by radiation therapy, my wife overcoming uterine cancer, getting COVID in the middle of my stem cell collection, and finally getting my bone marrow transplant. Unfortunately, the prospect of my cancer returning is very high, and when there isn’t any therapy that will help, I hope to approach this turn of events with all the strength, dignity, and grace I can.
Jeffrey
multiple myeloma (MM)
