Patient Stories

“Get your affairs in order; we have to treat immediately; average survival rate is 6 years” – those were jarring words for someone in his early 40s to hear 

I decided to publicize my experience as a person suffering from Waldenström's macroglobulinemia (WM) because, regardless of the importance of sharing clinical and therapeutic aspects with other patients, my own has turned out to be one of the (not very rare) cases in which the disease affected two members of the same family. And more to the point, it did so in different shapes and ways. For this reason I can state that my family's history has in the past been influenced by the manifestation and evolution of this pathology, as it is today and as it will be in the future.

Julianne Flora-Tostado became a caregiver after 41 years of marriage and on the same week her husband retired in seemingly good health.

I waited for months before I made the decision to write this simple page about my story. I don’t know what the exact reason for my hesitation was, but I believe I was not ready or not completely convinced that I wanted to do it.