Stronger Together - Luis and Paola's Journey with Multiple Myeloma

It was January 2024, and Paola had recently finished medical school. She was just settling into her new job at a San Diego company dedicated to advancing multiple myeloma research. Then the call came from her parents.

“Dad was feeling really bad,” she remembers. “He had a pain in his chest, and I told them to go to the ER, thinking that it was probably a heart attack.” In fact, it was a lesion in his rib. A biopsy at the El Paso, Texas, hospital near where they lived revealed it was multiple myeloma.

For nearly two years, her father, Luis, had seen multiple specialists – orthopedists and spine surgeons – for the severe pain he felt in his back.

“They found out that my L1 vertebrae had been damaged, but they didn't see that there were another six vertebrae almost in the same condition,” he explains. “His back was pretty damaged from the myeloma” adds Paola.  

That’s when Luis and his wife, Martha, decided to move to Houston for care at MD Anderson Cancer Center, where they thought they had their best chance of getting the right treatment. 

“So, my parents moved to Houston, and then I moved to Houston with them, because I wanted to be there to support them and live that experience with them, not have them be alone, because it can be pretty daunting,” says Paola. “We were there for about nine months … staying at a Hope Lodge by the American Cancer Society, and it was amazing.” 

From “Well” to Whirlwind: A Family Cancer Journey

The diagnosis came as a shock to Luis, Martha, and Paola’s large family of seven brothers and sisters, who were spread out across the US and Mexico. Her dad remembers feeling very well at the time, other than his back pain. A native of Mexico and a graduate of the Sloan School of Management at MIT, Luis had worked in several US and overseas locations over the years. Now he was semi-retired with his own consulting business after a long, successful career directing manufacturing operations. He looked forward to more free time, including with the horses and spectacular sunsets at the family’s ranch.  

“All of a sudden, you know, you’re diagnosed with cancer,” Luis says. “Everything stopped. We had to move, to leave our house …to leave my economic activity.” 

In a conversation Luis and Paola had with HealthTree Foundation in honor of Myeloma Awareness Month, they looked back at that challenging time and agreed it was the right choice for them. “I think it really brought us together,” says Paola, who acknowledges she had to change her mindset from being completely independent to focusing solely on treating her father’s disease to get it under control. 

Before he was able to begin treatment for the myeloma, 74-year-old Luis needed to endure a spinal fusion and the painful recovery that accompanied it. Paola, teary-eyed at times, describes what it was like when she and her mom needed to do everything possible to help.

“It definitely brought us closer together. Just living those moments where you have to really focus on what's important, which is health and general well-being, mental health, and physical health. And you kind of just forget about the rest of the world.”

Luis says that receiving care at a world-class cancer center made a profound difference for him and his family, as they looked at his health comprehensively, first treating his back, then his high-risk myeloma, including the complications of having only one kidney. "They built a circle of care... it was fantastic.” That included specialists in neurosurgery, oncology, palliative care, and social work.

“Social work was such a big help,” says Paola, who gives a shout-out to Thomas, the social worker who she describes as “amazing,” providing them with alternatives for places to stay, transportation, and more. “The whole team at MD Anderson was just amazing, to be honest. We are very grateful for them. They made everything less scary.”

Equally impactful, both father and daughter speak to all they learned from HealthTree when they most needed reliable, trusted information, and to know there were others going through similar challenges. (Paola later went to work for HealthTree.) “There's a statistic that says that educated patients live longer, and I definitely agree with that. I saw that with my own dad,” she says. Watch the full conversation below and Luis's advice for other myeloma patients. 

From Community to Cures

The family also credits the power of faith and community. Their stay at Hope Lodge brought them together with 150 other patients from around the globe.  

“It was really beautiful to stay there... where we had so many people that were going through the same thing,” says Paola. “It was so comforting to have conversations with these people and build a real family. We used to say that we were a family. I'm going to cry.”

“It helped a lot to share those experiences,” adds Luis, who later sold his business and moved back to Tijuana with Martha. He also credits an old friend and business partner for some life-altering words. He said, “Concentrate and focus on your disease, 100%, and let me help with this.” And the support and advice that he had from his wife, “the best caregiver in the world, every day.”

“Don’t ever give up,” is Luis’s advice to others faced with multiple myeloma. “There are choices. There are ways of living better, whether you're going to have 20 years or one year, or whatever you have. Try to live to the best of your ability, whatever it is right now.”

Connect with Other Myeloma Patients and Caregivers