Being diagnosed with multiple myeloma can feel overwhelming, confusing, and deeply unfair. Suddenly you are hearing unfamiliar terms, facing complicated treatment decisions, and trying to understand what this blood cancer means for your body, your future, and your everyday life.
This patient-friendly guide is written to help you get your footing. It explains multiple myeloma in straightforward language, including how this plasma cell cancer affects the bone marrow, why it can cause bone lesions, kidney damage, anemia, infections, pain, fatigue, and neuropathy, and how doctors use lab tests, imaging, and bone marrow results to understand what is happening.
The goal is not to turn you into a doctor. The goal is to help you become a more informed, confident patient.
The book walks you through common myeloma treatments, including chemotherapy, immunotherapy, stem cell transplant, maintenance therapy, CAR T-cell therapy, bispecific antibodies, and treatment for relapsed myeloma. It also discusses the side effects and practical challenges that often matter most in real life: infection risk, steroid effects, neuropathy, bone-strengthening drugs, pain management, fatigue, financial toxicity, insurance, disability, caregiving, and the emotional strain of living with a chronic cancer.
Written by a long-term multiple myeloma patient and former science professor, this book combines careful research with a patient's perspective. It is especially useful for newly diagnosed myeloma patients, but it can also help caregivers, family members, and friends understand what their loved one is going through.
If you are looking for a clear, practical, and reassuring multiple myeloma patient guide, this book was written for you.
Grant W. Petty is a scientist and a long-term multiple myeloma patient. He was diagnosed in 2018 and has lived through the treatments, side effects, uncertainties, and adjustments that define life with this disease. As a retired professor of atmospheric science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he is the author of several widely used textbooks. By necessity, he has also become an expert patient-learning to interpret lab results, ask better questions, and navigate a complex medical system over years of treatment. This book grew into the resource he wished he'd had at diagnosis: one place where the science, the medicine, and the lived experience come together. His goal is not to tell you what to do, but to help you understand what's happening-so you can make decisions with confidence and face the road ahead a little less alone.
