Myeloma Quotes

In 2005, a man diagnosed with multiple myeloma asked me if he would be alive to watch his daughter graduate from high school in a few months. In 2009, bound to a wheelchair, he watched his daughter graduate from college. The wheelchair had nothing to do with his cancer. The man had fallen down while coaching his youngest son's baseball team.

book. Myeloma as a description has its origins with the Greek medical genius Hippocrates, who did the earliest known work on cancer, which he called karkinoma (carcinoma) because the tumors often resembled a crab, karkinos in ancient Greek. In modern descriptions, the condition is complex and treacherous: Plasma cells in the bone marrow become malignant and produce tumors, causing destruction of the bone and resulting in pathologic fracture and pain. A secretory form of the disease is characterized by the presence of Bence-Jones protein, a monoclonal immunoglobulin, which can cause anemia and kidney disease

used primarily to slow osseous involvement of a number of cancers (multiple myeloma and metastatic breast or prostate carcinoma), to treat Paget’s disease (see page 623), and to reverse osteoporosis.

disease76 375,000 2. Lung diseases (lung cancer,77 COPD, and asthma78) 296,000 3. You’ll be surprised! (see chapter 15) 225,000 4. Brain diseases (stroke79 and Alzheimer’s80) 214,000 5. Digestive cancers (colorectal, pancreatic, and esophageal)81 106,000 6. Infections (respiratory and blood)82 95,000 7. Diabetes83 76,000 8. High blood pressure84 65,000 9. Liver disease (cirrhosis and cancer)85 60,000 10. Blood cancers (leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma)86 56,000 11. Kidney disease87 47,000 12. Breast cancer88 41,000 13. Suicide89 41,000 14. Prostate cancer90 28,000 15. Parkinson’s disease91 25,000

My dad, who was seventy-four, was now ill with myeloma and cancer in his bloodstream. My mom, who was much younger, spent every day and night taking care of him. I wanted somebody in my life to do that for me, and I wanted somebody I could do that for.

Finally, myeloma is a cancer of plasma cells, which are white blood cells that produce antibodies, the proteins that stick to invaders and infected cells to neutralize or tag them for destruction. Cancerous plasma cells can displace healthy cells from your bone marrow and make abnormal antibodies that can clog the kidneys. About 90 percent of myeloma sufferers are discovered with masses of cancer cells growing in multiple bones of their bodies, hence the common term for this condition, multiple myeloma. Each year, twenty-four

Most people with multiple myeloma live for only a few years after diagnosis. Though treatable, multiple myeloma is considered incurable. That’s why prevention is key. Fortunately, dietary changes may reduce our risk of all these blood cancers.

myeloma is one of the most dreaded cancers. It is practically incurable even with aggressive medical treatment. As myeloma cells take over the bone marrow, healthy white blood cells continue to decline in number, which increases your susceptibility to infection. Reduced levels of red blood cells can lead to anemia, and reduced platelet counts can lead to serious bleeding. Once diagnosed, most people survive fewer than five years.25 Multiple myeloma does not occur out of the blue. It appears to be nearly always preceded by a precancerous

petri dish. Without any intervention, the cancer cells quadrupled within a few days—that’s how fast this cancer can grow. But when a little curcumin was added to the broth they were bathing in, the myeloma cells’ growth was either stunted or stopped altogether.30 As we’ve discovered, stopping cancer in a laboratory is one thing. What about in people? In 2009, a pilot study found that half (five out of ten) of the subjects with MGUS who had particularly high abnormal antibody levels responded positively to curcumin supplements.

The personal case histories were the most encouraging. A prominent Los Angeles public relations executive has been living with MM for fourteen years, rides horses, and has an altogether active life on drug maintenance. An Arizona man survived MM and with his wife set up a foundation and website for other families bewildered by the diagnosis. I learned, for the first time, that Frank McGee, host of the Today show from 1971 to 1974, suffered from MM and kept it from everyone despite his ever more gaunt appearance. When he died after putting in another full week on the air his producers and friends were stunned. Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, was another MM casualty, which led many to believe that he had established the high-profile multiple myeloma treatment center in Little Rock, Arkansas. This is a full-immersion process in which MM is the singular target under the commanding title of Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy. There is a Walton auditorium on the institute’s University of Arkansas medical school campus, but the institute itself was founded by Bart Barlogie, a renowned MM specialist from the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. The institute has an impressive record, running well ahead of the national average for survival for those who are dealing with MM. One number is especially notable. The institute has followed 1,070 patients for more than ten years, and 783 have never had a relapse of the disease. Sam Walton was treated by Dr. Barlogie at MD Anderson before the Little Rock institute was founded, but the connection ended there. Walton, who’d had an earlier struggle with leukemia, didn’t survive his encounter with multiple myeloma, dying in April 1992, a time when life expectancy for a man his age with this cancer was short. I was unaware of all of this when I was diagnosed. I took comfort in the repeated reassurances of specialists that great progress in treating MM with a new class of drugs, your own body’s reengineered immunology system, was rapidly improving chances of a longer survival than the published five to ten years. As I began to respond to treatment the favored and welcome line was, “You’re gonna die but from something else.