Reflections from Lenny

Taking Your Life Back
Massachusetts General Hospital
June 17, 1997

In the movie Apollo 13, the bad news started with the call to mission control: "Houston, we have a problem." That's kind of how I first found out about my problem. It started with a simple but overdue physical after which my doctor congratulated me on being so healthy and in good shape. Then, 32 months ago, on the morning of my 41st birthday, he called and said, "There's a problem with the results of your blood test." Two tests later it was confirmed that I had a problem -- there was a spike, an abnormal amount of protein in my blood. Two failed blood tests and much apprehension later I was told that I would need a bone-marrow sample withdrawn from my pelvis. This turned out to be an excruciatingly painful procedure -- and the pain lasted for days. Two months almost to the day of that first call, my "problem" was verified and quantified. The doctor said ominously that the bone-marrow test was not normal; I'd better come over because he didn't want to discuss it on the phone. Talk about a panic-provoking, plummeting, shocking, and devastating moment. The doctor's room grew scarily small. I had a trapped feeling, like I was being smothered. I felt like a deer caught in the headlights. It's been said that three of the worst words you can be told are "you've got cancer." Now I had multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow -- an uncontrolled growth of plasma cells. I'd never even heard of it and, worse, the doctor told me there was no conventional cure for it. Complete remission was almost unknown. I'd always been a bit of a maverick, and proud to be different, but did I have to get such a rare form of cancer? Multiple myeloma accounts for less than three percent of all cancer cases in America. Thirteen thousand patients are diagnosed a year; 10,000 die each year.

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More reflections from Lenny
You Must Make a Difference
Defeating the Ambush of Hate
No Justification for Silence

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