Search Results

Tricia

My story is truly about the little family that could. In 2002, I felt I had it all: a loving partner, a new job offer, and plans to start a family. Upon my return from a business trip in May, that feeling shifted as a large lump appeared on the side of my neck. Several doctor visits, tests, and sleepless nights later, I received a phone call on the way to a meeting from a doctor. He asked me to pull the car over. He told me I had cancer. Everything stopped.

Chaneta Juliet

Hi, my name is Chaneta, I like to go by Juliet. This past year has been an interesting one, to say the least. I’m a singer-songwriter who wrote and released an album in October 2017. I thought the year was going to be an amazing one–promoting and performing–unfortunately, I performed one time and I began to literally unravel. In December 2017, I caught the flu. Normal stuff, not too bad right? Well, about three weeks in, it got worse. It turned into walking pneumonia. Chest X-rays revealed a blood clot lodged in my right-side lung.

Sara

    Seeing Roses

Joshua

Just three days after Christmas, my world was turned upside down. I was admitted to the hospital because I was unable to keep any food down and felt terrible overall. Upon admission, I had a multitude of issues, just a few being extremely high uric acid levels, severe dehydration, pancreatitis, and nephrosis. They also discovered that I had lost 20 lbs.! Later in the hospital, I would lose 20 more.

Jude

At age five, on my fourth day of kindergarten, I was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). With the 85% survival rate for ALL, I was confident I would go through this for the next three years but one month later after the induction period, my doctor told us I didn’t respond and I may need a bone marrow transplant.

Jane

In October 2015, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma (HL). After growing up never getting sick, I had cancer. It was incredibly difficult to comprehend at the age of 13 that I was about to endure something most people won’t experience in a lifetime. I went through four rounds of chemotherapy and was in remission in January of 2016. Once you’re in remission, you believe that that’s the end. You’ll have a few check-ups here and there, but in your head, you envision no more cancer.

Kathryn

My symptoms became pretty intense in December 2017. I was 21 at the time and living a healthy and active lifestyle, but my symptoms were starting to interfere with my quality of life. I was experiencing a cough, fatigue, unexplained weight loss, and pretty intense back pain, along with several swollen lymph nodes primarily on the left side of my collarbone.

Joshua

My name is Joshua. I was born and raised in South Florida and moved to Oregon after high school 8 years ago. I can’t say that I had a difficult childhood growing up just difficult circumstances that were challenges to overcome. I am what most people would consider an introverted type of personality, and while I was raised in a home with very caring parents and sisters, I’ve just always found it difficult to fit in, especially once I got to high school. I’m tall, at almost 6 feet, and very smart, always in advanced placement classes.

Erin & Meghan

I always loved fall. It is such a special time. My birthday is the first day of fall. I love unpacking my favorite boots, lighting pumpkin spice candles, and making warm soups. Fall always signified that special holidays and quality time with family were quickly approaching. These were events to get excited about! But in the last few years, fall has taken on a new meaning for me.

Ariana

In the blink of an eye, our lives can crumble underneath us like a tsunami drowning the life out of a city. Many of us unknowingly stand on the edge of an eroding cliff and one slip away from relinquishing our most desired aspirations. At 19 years old, I stood inches away from the edge of that cliff when I was diagnosed with essential thrombocythemia (ET). This was one of the most defining moments in my life that propelled me into a tenacious desire to become a physician capable of fully understanding the fragility of life.

Treatment Outcomes

With the current advances in treatment and supportive care, survival rates for myeloma patients have improved significantly in the last decades. It is not unusual for myeloma patients to live for 10 years or longer after diagnosis. Outcomes are influenced by a series of patient-specific factors, including disease stage, chromosome abnormalities, age and presence of other medical problems. Patients should discuss their own potential outcomes with their doctors.

Click here to access myeloma survival statistics.

Be Your Child’s Advocate

Parents may need to educate other family members, friends, school personnel and healthcare providers about long-term and late effects. Here are some steps parents can take:

Options for Sperm Preservation

You may be able to take certain steps and precautions to preserve fertility before, during and after treatment. 

Amy

In December 2015, our son, William, started complaining of leg/knee pain. William had always been an active boy, so we figured that he must have just hurt himself doing something physical. After a few days of the pain continuing, my husband thought that maybe it was “growing pains.” We continued to keep an eye on it but weren’t too concerned at this point. By the end of the week, I called our pediatrician for an appointment. William had an exam and bloodwork done. He was also given antibiotics.

Kabir

Kabir is an eight-year-old boy who is very affectionate, loving, and sweet. He has endless interests and loves dogs, superheroes, ponies, mermaids, magic shows, zoos, roller coasters, rock collecting, traveling, eating at "fancy" restaurants, watching television and movies, building Legos, and playing video games. Before his diagnosis, Kabir also enjoyed swimming and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He is caring by nature and an amazing older brother to his younger sibling, Ayaan.

Caitlyn

My world started to turn upside down in January of 2019 after starting to exercise and trying to lose weight. At first, I thought I had pulled a muscle in my leg. The cramping continued to increase and turned into radiating bone pain. I went to get an x-ray to make sure nothing was broken. There were no broken bones or fractures, so they sent me on my way.

Gwendolyn

Gwendolyn describes herself as a wanderlust who never likes to let the grass grow under her feet. After college, she moved from her hometown in Florida to Houston and spent the next few years moving around Texas for work. She started her new life in Texas where her son, Sterling, was born and raised. She loves traveling, but following a trip to Belize, she started to notice white spots on her skin and other strange issues happening with her health. After doing some research on her own and going to the doctors, she was told she likely had lupus.

Thomas

I had bariatric surgery on May 11, 2022. At the time, I weighed just under 600 pounds, and I understood that there was a higher possibility for complications. My three-hour procedure turned into a six-hour procedure, and my overnight stay in the hospital turned into a week. During surgery, they discovered my spleen was significantly larger than normal, and in the days following my surgery, I kept losing blood. After two exploratory surgeries, four units of blood, and a trip to the ICU later, I was finally released from the hospital with no confirmed cause of bleeding.

Andres

I want to start off by saying that my husband is amazing. My father passed away suddenly in September 2023, and my husband was my rock. He does/did everything he could to help me through my grief and still does. My husband had been complaining that he felt like something was stuck in his throat, but he would clear his throat, and it would go away. The week before Thanksgiving 2023, my husband was watching a funny video on YouTube and laughed so hard he couldn't catch his breath. He leaned forward trying to catch his breath but cut off his airway and collapsed face forward onto the floor.

LLS PedAL - A pillar of the Dare to Dream Project

Through LLS PedAL, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) is setting out to fundamentally change how children with pediatric acute leukemia, including acute myeloid leukemia and other high-risk leukemias, are treated.

Talking About Cancer

Telling people about your diagnosis is a very personal decision. Some people with cancer choose to tell only close family. Others find it helps to let more people know about their diagnosis. Take some time to consider what and how much you would like to share about your diagnosis and how you want to share this information. By letting friends and family know about your diagnosis, you give them the chance to offer their support.

Here are some tips and things to keep in mind when telling someone about your diagnosis:

Myeloma Overview

As black Americans are at twice the risk for myeloma as whites, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society has created Myeloma Link to increase access to education and treatment for myeloma in African American communities.

Chemotherapy and Drug Therapy

The main treatment for active myeloma is systemic drug therapy (meaning the drugs travel through the bloodstream to kill malignant cells). The initial therapy, or “induction therapy,” for myeloma usually includes a combination of targeted agents and/or standard chemotherapy. This therapy is often followed by stem cell transplantation in eligible patients.

Induction therapy, given before the transplant, has several goals:

Amanda

My name is Amanda, and I am a stage 4b classical multicellularity Hodgkin lymphoma (CHL) survivor. It all started after spring break of my junior year of high school. I was on a ski trip when I noticed my feet were more itchy than normal. I figured it was from the boots. After coming home and realizing it had gotten worse, we went to the pediatrician. She looked at the bruises and scratch marks on my legs and diagnosed me with scabies. I did the whole treatment for that, and obviously, it didn’t work. A week or two later. we went back and had some basic bloodwork done.

Renee

I was a senior in high school preparing to graduate. I had summer plans to work at my youth group camp and endless ideas for my future. That all came crashing down on May 27, 2002, when I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). AML is a rare and rapidly growing cancer of the bone marrow that destroys the production of normal blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets. At the time of my diagnosis, my family was given devastating odds that only a miracle could fix. I was so dangerously sick that I needed multiple transfusions immediately, and that was just the beginning.