If you’ve been told that “you have multiple myeloma” you should read this book. The sooner you begin to learn about MM the sooner you will be able to wrap your brain around your life as a MM survivor.
Beating Myeloma- If I Knew Then What I Know Now I wrote Beating Myeloma… for newly diagnosed MM patients because I really do wish I had the information in this ebook when I was first diagnosed.
I am a MM survivor of an incurable cancer called multiple myeloma. If I had listened to conventional oncology exclusively in the years after my original MM diagnosis I would not be writing this now.
The information below will help you think through your life as a CA patient, survivor or caregiver.
My MM Story
“My neck had been bothering me for a few months so in late January 1994, I went to a local outpatient clinic to see if I could find out what was wrong with me…”
Why MM Patients Can’t Trust Cancer Research
“CA patients, survivors and caregivers have to trust their board certified oncologist to prescribe therapies that are thoroughly researched, tested and will cure their CA. They have to...”
Recommended Reading for the Cancer Patient–
The sooner you begin to read about CA the sooner you will be able to wrap your brain around your life as a CA survivor. I found that the most influential books, those books that taught me valuable lessons to help me manage my CA are not about CA at all.
Absolute versus relative risk – making sense of media stories
“What do these headlines have in common?
They’re all statements of the relative risk of developing CA. They tell us how much more, or less, likely the disease is in one group, compared to another.
But crucially, they don’t tell us anything about the overall likelihood of any of these things happening at all– what’s known as the absolute risk.”
“Mainstream medical treatment of MM revolves around surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, used either alone or in combination (Isobe T et al 2005; Ostoros G et al 2005).
Chemotherapy and radiation therapy cannot discriminate between cancer cells and healthy cells; thus, they damage both types of cells and cause serious and often debilitating side effects, frequently forcing patients to abandon treatment (Ettinger DS 2005; Giraud P et al 2004; Munden RF et al 2005).
Therefore, it is not surprising that many cancer patients now opt to complement conventional treatments with alternative /integrative therapies that may not only temper the adverse side effects of conventional CA therapy, but also improve its effectiveness via independent anti-CA effects…”
Cancer facts in the United States: According to the American Cancer Society-
1) 1 in 3 women and 1 in 2 men will receive a CA diagnosis at some point in their lives.
2) Approximately 1.6 million CA cases were diagnosed in 2011. Approximately 500,000 people died from CA in 2011.
3) There are approximately 14 million CA survivors alive in the United States in 2012 and this group grows by about 1,000,000 annually.
4) The majority of CA patients die not from cancer but with CA, often from treatment related side effects specially:
- infection
- cachexia or
- a blood clot (deep vein thrombosis or DVT)
5) Secondary cancers aka treatment related cancer is the sixth leading cause of cancer in the United States.
Multiple myeloma is a rare cancer causing about 1.8% of all annual cancer diagnoses in the U.S. annually and about 10% of all blood cancer diagnoses annually.
By comparison, the 12 most common cancers comprise over 85% of all newly diagnosed cancers in the U.S. annually- these cancers are:
- prostate,
- breast,
- colorectal,
- lung,
- bladder,
- kidney,
- melanoma,
- non-hodgkin lymphoma,
- leukemia,
- thyroid,
- endometrial, and
- pancreatic cancer
