On January 17, 2018, I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer. At the time of my diagnosis, statistics in the U.S. suggested that even with the best available treatments, I had about a 50/50 chance of surviving even five years.
This journal is my attempt to document my personal experience in a form that might be of interest to other myeloma patients, keeping in mind that everyone’s experience with the disease will be different.
Especially during the weeks and months before and after my diagnosis, I was either not thinking there was anything to document or I was too preoccupied to even consider it. So many of my experiences have been recorded retroactively. However, the posting date that you see reflects the approximate time that these things actually happened, so that the timeline is as consistent as I can make it with reality.
In 2025, I published a book for fellow patients called What to Expect When You Have Multiple Myeloma.