Pain Ignored is Danger Multiplied
Diseases
Blood Disease, Bone / Muscle Disease, Cancer, Chronic Pain, Mental Health
Issues and Challenges
Adrienne has encountered: Access to Expert Providers, Mental Health Access, Invisible Illness, Medical Discrimination, Transparency in Health Care
My Story
My name is Adrienne. I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma in October 2020 at age 42—nearly 30 years younger than the average myeloma patient.
It started with back pain, something I had dealt with for years. I had been landscaping our front yard and just assumed I’d overdone it. But this pain didn’t let up. One afternoon, while vacuuming, I broke down in tears from the agony. I felt nauseous and weak, so I sat down to rest. A few minutes later, I tried to use the restroom—but my body gave out. I had no strength in my legs to stand back up. I ended up on the floor, unable to get up.
I had already visited the ER the weekend before. They ran an EKG and told me it was a muscle strain and sent me home with lidocaine patches. The second time, a week later, I waited 9.5 hours, begging for imaging. The doctor tried to blame my pain on my keto diet, assuming it was gastrointestinal. It took hours of pleading—and a shift change—before someone finally agreed to do a CT scan.
When the results came back, the nurse practitioner told me the imaging looked fine. He apologized for not knowing what was causing my pain and sent me home.
At 11:30 p.m. that night, he called me.
He told me I needed to return to the ER immediately. When we arrived, he was waiting in the parking lot with a wheelchair.
The CT scan was anything but fine. I had a fractured T5 vertebra and multiple broken ribs caused by a cancer I had never even heard of: Multiple Myeloma. My spine was so unstable I could have become paralyzed. The truth hit me all at once—how close I had come to losing everything. How many times I’d been dismissed, told it was my gallbladder, or my diet.
From that moment, my life changed overnight. I underwent spinal corpectomy surgery, followed by radiation, iron infusions, induction therapy, chemotherapy, and tandem stem cell transplants. It was brutal. I lost physical strength, memory, energy—and a sense of who I was. The world kept turning, but mine felt like it was falling apart piece by piece.
I quickly discovered that most resources and information about Multiple Myeloma are geared toward patients in their 70s and older. I was 42—raising kids, managing a marriage, trying to survive—and I didn’t see my story represented anywhere. I didn’t feel seen.
I’m in remission now, but I still live with the aftershocks: fatigue, brain fog, grief. I’m tired of being tired. Tired of feeling invisible. But I refuse to let that stop me.
That’s why I started a local support group—to create space for connection, validation, and community. I became an advocate because too many others—especially younger patients and people of color—are being dismissed or overlooked. I speak up because pain should be believed, and age should never be an excuse to look the other way.
Even with expanding cages, screws and rods in my spine, I’m still standing. And I will keep standing—for awareness, for earlier diagnoses, and for every patient who was told their suffering didn’t add up.
My Motivation and Inspiration
My experience taught me something I can never forget:
Pain ignored is danger multiplied.
And too many people—especially younger patients, women, and people of color—are still being ignored.
I speak out because I didn’t see myself in the brochures or the statistics. I speak out because younger Myeloma patients exist—and we deserve to be seen, believed, and supported.
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