My piece on assisted suicide went up today, and just in case there are any readers who think I wrote it as a subtle way of saying that things are going badly with my multiple myeloma, I didn’t. This is something that’s been on my radar for a while, and it was Jerry Brown signing California’s right-to-die bill last year that prompted me to finally write about it.
In fact, my health is pretty amazingly good right now. Even my back has nearly returned to normal—close enough that I’ve started up disc golfing again on weekends. Aside from the normal twinges and squeaks of a 57-year-old body, there’s nothing wrong with me. The myeloma is basically like having high cholesterol: you know there’s some stuff going on inside that’s bad and will eventually cause trouble, but in the meantime it isn’t causing any problems at all.
As for my longer term diagnosis, I don’t know yet. After my last visit with my oncologist I finally requested a new one. I had put this off for a long time just due to laziness, but I finally had enough with her. My first visit with the new doc is tomorrow, and we’ll see how that goes—though I doubt I’ll have any real news for months. In the meantime, I’m buoyed by the rather startling outbreak of new treatments for multiple myeloma that have suddenly come to market. It’s not that they’re a lot better than the current ones, but different people react in surprisingly disparate ways to different treatments. So there’s at least a decent chance that eventually one of these new treatments might turn out to more effective on me than the ones I’ve had so far. We’ll see.
