If you looked at her, you wouldn’t know that our mom has had Multiple Myeloma for the last five years.

When she told us about her diagnosis four years ago, it was scary. It felt as if she was telling us that she was going to die tomorrow. But what we learned over time was that her “progression” (the rate at which her cancer was growing) was pretty slow. It still made her tired, and feel pretty crappy, but we stopped worrying that she was going to die at any moment.

We got back to living… we watched her make dinner every night, keep the house tidy, walk the dog, even go to the gym. We saw her at all our baseball games, cheering like a crazy woman from the sidelines, and even got to go skiing with her in the winter. We remembered that there was more to our mom than her cancer.

But, during the pandemic, our mom started feeling worse. Her labs showed that the progression had picked up speed, and that her cancer was starting to take over. Because Multiple Myeloma is a rare form of blood cancer that destroys the bone marrow, there’s nothing to take out with surgery (unless you have a vampire handy!). In April, she told us that her cancer doctor was suggesting that it was time for treatment.

None of us have had cancer, so we really didn’t know what that meant.

Our mom explained that her treatment would take about six months and would have two different stages to it: during the first stage, she takes chemotherapy pills and shots and is able to work, as long as she feels OK. During the second phase, she will have to check into the hospital for a few weeks and will get very aggressive chemotherapy infusions. If all goes well, she’ll be eligible for stem cell transplant after that (how she will be able to grow new bone marrow after they kill off all hers!).

While our mom has been able to take care of us for this first part, she won’t be able to even take care of herself during the second part. Our mom’s best friend, Jen will come to live with us for about three months so that we can focus on school and Jen can take care of mom when she comes back from the hospital. We know that we’re going to have to give her a lot of love, and time to sleep (apparently that’s when you grow new bone marrow), but she’s going to need a lot more than we can provide.

Our mom has always been that person who has taken care of others (it’s her job, too), but now that she is sick, she needs help.

We want our mom to focus on getting better, not on the making dinner or keeping the house clean. We can do a lot about that- and our neighbors have been so cool to sign up to bring us dinners, but then there’s stuff we just can’t do without your help. We want to make sure that mom has as little stress as possible- and money just seems to be the thing that adults stress about! Knowing that the house and office are paid for, and that we have what we need will let her do the only thing she needs to do: get better.

Thank you so much for anything that you can do!