As many of you know, my mom was diagnosed with an aggressive form of multiple myeloma in March 2017 (high-risk myeloma). Through these past 3 1/2 years, mom valiantly stood strong through numerous types of therapies, most significantly an autologous stem cell transplant in September 2017, followed by four newly available drug combinations afterwards each time the myeloma would recur. Just as you would expect from my mom, she went through each round of treatment with graciousness and a smile on her face, and little complaint despite a few complications along the way. These treatments and her positive attitude gave her an opportunity to embark on a number of adventures around the globe with her close family and good friends, checking off a good number of items from her bucket list. May it be showing her grandchildren around her birthplace of Hong Kong, hiking up the majestic Huangshan mountain faster than her friends, watching a Broadway show in New York, snorkeling in the tranquil waters of Hawaii, or beachcombing in Mexico, mom lived life to the fullest and refused to be restricted by the myeloma. Sadly, due to the very aggressive nature of her myeloma, even the newest of treatments no longer worked to suppress the disease, and despite a final courageous battle these last couple of months, she passed away on October 18, 2020.
As a physician, it was certainly a blessing to have the background clinical knowledge to help guide mom through all the medical appointments and decisions to be made over these years. However, it was also somewhat of a curse, knowing all along that high-risk myeloma remains a terribly aggressive disease, with mom's courage and strength and these new myeloma drugs going only so far to fight this cancer. Mom had the misfortune of developing a rare myeloma that had not only one but two of the bad genetic alterations that are seen in high-risk myeloma (so called ultra high-risk myeloma), and the 3 1/2 years that she survived the disease is already beyond the average for this type of myeloma. It is no doubt though that much more understanding through laboratory research and clinical trials is needed to defeat this terrible form of myeloma. Myeloma Canada has been crucial over the past few years to coordinate the clinical trials, patient education and government lobbying needed to make new drug therapies available, and I certainly hope that mom's legacy can help future sufferers of high-risk myeloma an even better chance at defeating it.
