Personal stories of myeloma

I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma at the very end of August of 2016. I was 54 years old but for sure I had been living with it for at least 2 years before.

My name is Paule Désir. In April of 2021, at the age of 53, I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. Fifty three years of a life with its share of ups and downs!

I was born in a refugee camp in Germany. They were called DP, or displaced persons camps in those days and that is where my parents ended up when they escaped the Soviet Union during the Second World War.

Just over two years ago, in April of 2020, I woke up one morning with a soreness in my left side, in my lower ribcage. I’m a mariner and I was 56 at the time. I like working hard and I like riding my bike, sailing, snowshoeing, and hiking. At my age, bein

In the fall of 2017, life was looking pretty good! I was 41 years old, happily single and living it up in Toronto. I was just getting into running, and I had landed a dream job as a Digital Literacy Consultant with the YRDSB after 18 years as a music teac

My husband Jean Guy was chief of the Emergency Medical Services in our district of Nipissing, Ontario for 20 years. By profession, I was a registered nurse and spent 35 years working in the ER. When Jean Guy retired in August of 2019 at the age of 62, he

I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2015 when I was 39 years old. I suffered excruciating back pain for months and the doctors could not figure out why. I thought I had pulled a muscle. I had been doing a lot of running training for a half marathon a

When I was only three years old, my mother was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, and although I do not remember much about that time, I know that I was deeply impacted and the concern for her health has been with me for all these years. 

In 2006 at the age of 52, my family doctor sent me for what I thought was routine blood work. When he received the results, he referred me to a hematologistA doctor who specializes in the problems of blood and bone marrow. at The Ottawa Hospital because of what he saw. I subsequently met with the hematologist, had more b

I am my husband’s caregiver! I am his strength, his courage and his hope…It all started with Catalino napping for too long after work, missing workouts and complaining of a nagging pain in his shoulder. This was seven (7) months prior to hearing the dread