Hope Beyond High-Risk Multiple Myeloma: A Personal Diary

Denny Davis is a respected engineering professor, who retired on paper. In retirement he refocused to improve engineering education and to bring engineering alive for grandchildren and youth in his community. Then in early 2018, a lump on his head was diagnosed as multiple myeloma, a treatable but incurable blood cancer. This began a journey he described as an opportunity to prepare better for life's final years on earth and beyond. Davis takes the reader through his multiple myeloma experience from diagnosis to cancer remission, stem cell transplant, and preparation for an unknown future. He describes medical procedures, their impacts on him, and his hope-filled perspectives on life in this body and beyond. Along this journey, medical professionals described Davis' physical and personal responses to treatments as fabulous, amazing, and wonderful-outcomes exuding hope.Davis keeps a sharp focus on hope at all stages of his description of diagnosis, treatment, and recovery. He presents conditions that dash one's hope, biblical reasons for hope, and outcomes that shout of tangible hope. He ends by explaining what constitutes solid hope and how to tap into this hope. Although many cancer stories speak of hope for the short term, this one points the reader to hope for the short and long term. In the face of life-threatening conditions, we can have hope that brings peace and joy.