My old companion multiple myeloma and I crossed paths a couple of times this week.

First, I lost another friend to the disease. She was a sweet woman, the mother of friends of ours, and became my own friend in the end. I met her a couple of times, and we talked about multiple myeloma and what a dastardly disease it is. Dolly had it for four years, and in the end it just seemed to wear her out. She couldn’t get relief from the pain and stay active in any way, so her doctor and family made her as comfortable as possible until she passed away.

The second instance began with someone approaching me in the grocery store and saying, “You must be Jim Arnold.”

In the past, I might not have been quick to acknowledge the greeting. Nowadays, though, people usually link me to this column and want to talk about that. And, since my picture is run with the piece each week, admitting who I am seems like the only way to go.

As it turns out, it was a friend, a fellow multiple myeloma sufferer. We had never actually met before, but communicated online and through email. He knew me from the aforementioned photo with the column.

Anyway, there we were in the baking aisle, and we started talking. I suppose anyone seeing us, and having to maneuver past us to get their items, would assume we were talking sports, probably college basketball, given the time of year. We weren’t, though, we were talking about multiple myeloma.

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In theory, one shouldn’t run into too many people who have it since it affects just 6.1 per 100,000 people in the U.S., and constitutes only 1 percent of all cancers. We need to take every talking chance we get.

I had come to know this guy when he sent me an email about his condition, which had, at the time, just become active. He wondered if I would talk with him about it, which, of course, I did.

On this day, amongst the flour, the chips of many flavors and a wide variety of decorating doo dads, we compared where we were in our treatments. He’s part of a trial study comparing, I think, people who have stem-cell transplants early in their treatment, as opposed to those who wait until a more conventional time.

As people walked around us filling their baking needs, we focused on the crux of the matter: Both of us are doing quite well, right now, my other issues not withstanding. But with multiple myeloma, more than with most cancers I would suppose, we know it’s going to come back at some point. Yeah, it can go into what we describe as remission, but, since it’s incurable, it is, almost by definition, going to come back. What do you do with something like that? Good question.

I initially imagined it would be on my mind constantly. Each month as I went to have blood work done and my bone density treatment applied, I figured I would be worried right up till the moment my blood work results came back. But it hasn’t turned out that way. I don’t know why, but I hardly ever think about the outcome, even when I’m having my blood work done.

My friend struggles with it much more. Partly, I’m sure, because he hasn’t been living with the whole idea as long as I have. His worries now are exactly what I thought my worries would always be. Our bumping into each other in the store, though, brought me back to a place I had been — one where I thought I would still be living, and gave me the chance to consider what has happened.

My friend from the grocery store, my late friend Dolly, all of the other 6.1 per 100,000 and I have to come to grips with multiple myeloma in general, and, perhaps, this aspect of it more than any other. And despite all the support we have, at 3 a.m., when we are most alone and vulnerable, that’s when we need to find something that works … for each of us. I can’t do it for them, and they can’t do it for me.

That’s why I have to take advantage of running into friends in the grocery store, or receiving a note or email from someone. What we share at those times makes the darkness at 3 a.m. less dark, less foreboding. And maybe, just maybe, we can help each other put our strategies in place to come to grips with our sneaky little disease.

Jim Arnold is a former copy editor for the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel. To read more about his journey through cancer, visit his blog, findingthepony.blogspot.com.


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