Can myeloma patients have pets?

Can myeloma patients have pets?

This is a topic that becomes much more relevant around cellular therapies and stem cell transplantation. And I think different centers have different guidelines about pets. Interestingly, birds and lizards tend to be the most challenging actually, as opposed to cats or dogs.

My general suggestion to my my patients is that we can have dogs and we can have cats around the time of a transplant, for example. My patient should not be the one dealing with the cat box. They want to be hanging out with the dog. They're not the one picking up dog poop in the backyard or when they walk the dog. Petting the dog is fine, petting the cat is fine, but I try to keep the animals out of their bedroom, especially around the transplant period. Because if your cats are anything like my cats or your dog’s anything like my dog, it’s on the bed no matter what I do and it's sitting on my pillow and I don't want the cat jumping out of the cat box and then onto my pillow. I really don't want that happening for my patient who's about to go through a stem cell transplant or to get CAR-T cell therapy.

Later on in treatment, it's less of an issue. It really is less of an issue. And I think we all recognize the importance of pets in a lot of our patients lives. That it's a huge part of their emotional support around, what can be at times a very difficult diagnosis. And so we don't want to rob people of that, just like I don't want my patients not to spend time with their families. I want them I want them there for those big, important life events. I want them to have their emotional support animals. It's really important to them. So it's about being smart at the right times, keeping them out of the bedroom at the right time. And, you know, I'm always willing to tell patients’ family members, “You got to deal with the cat box.”