Join The Fight Against Multiple Myeloma: The Blackest Cancer

You've heard of breast cancer, lung cancer, and brain cancer, but have you heard of blood cancer?

I know I hadn't before my mother was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma.

Multiple Myeloma is a blood cancer that originates deep in the bone marrow's, plasma cells. Due to a genetic mutation, cancerous cells over crowd healthy plasma cells which make antibodies that stave off infection.

Needless to say, with cancer running through your blood, it is well, everywhere. Not relegated to an organ, a tumor, or some other place in the body which could be amputated as a solution.

My extended family and I have been terrified by the news. In my search to help my mother, I learned that Multiple Myeloma is a cancer most often found in people of African descent. Afro American, Afro Latino, Afro anything really.

It is an unpopular and undertreated cancer found in members of underserved communities. Many updated more progressive treatments of Multiple Myeloma often escape these populations due to poverty and lack of access.

I seek to remedy that with this fundraiser. By finding what works for my mother, the matriarch of my extended family, we can further educate our community on what to look out for as well as what to expect.

There are two to three stages a person goes through before being diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, and one of them is anemia. Every third black woman I know, is anemic. We even joke about chronic anemia when in reality it is practically slow organ failure. It is so common among us we are hardly alarmed, yet this one of the routes Multiple Myeloma takes to creep into our lives.

In raising awareness of rudimentary facts like these within the African American community, we can help others discover this creeping cancer early on or better still, treat its precursors so that Multiple Myeloma never has a chance to develop.

Please say you'll help us in our fight against cancer. These funds will be used to ensure my mother has the best possible treatment, while I in turn put my journalism major to good use and report back via my YouTube platform on our findings, triumphs, and best practices.

The solidarity color of Multiple Myeloma Cancer is Burgandy, a deep wine-red color, traditionally found in most African American households.

If you've read this far please be encouraged and know that no donation is too small. Everything counts in the fight for life.

Thank you.

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C. A. Handley (Uppity Unicorn)

University of Washington

Seattle University