My story

Just nod if you can hear me
Comfortably numb - Pink Floyd

I started this blog to keep my friends and family up to date with my treatment progress. But I know from my own experience that, faced with a myeloma diagnosis, I googled endlessly for information, and found other people's diaries very helpful. Maybe you've found me the same way.

Here is the story of my experiences with myeloma in the order in which it happened...

Me
A bit about who I am

Myeloma WTF?!
A summary of what I found when I googled myeloma - I'd never even heard of it

Diagnosis
The sorry tale of how I discovered I had myeloma - a bewildering and terrifying sequence of events

Front line
My first experience of chemo: 5 months of velcade/bortezomib, doxorubicin/adriamycin and dexamethazone

Vertebroplasty
Surgery significantly reduced the pain I was living in from the bone damage I had sustained prior to diagnosis

SCT - hospital
My diary from stem cell harvest to 25 days after my stem cell transplant, when I finally made it home from hospital

SCT - recuperation
My diary from day 25 to day 100, as I recovered

Living in remission
The next year, learning to live with lurking myeloma

Approximating normal
Another year, more living, less myeloma.

Slowlapse
The, ever so slow, return of myeloma into my life

Progression
The end of the waiting game, the start of round two

The continuation of round two

Doing my best to ignore myeloma