FAIRMONT - Cancer can change everything about your life: your schedule, your finances, your activities, your friends, your faith, your attitude and, of course, your health.

When diagnosed with multiple myeloma - pronounced my-low-muh - a person is facing a life sentence with the disease. There is no cure. This cancer invades the bone marrow, affecting production of red cells, white cells and stem cells.

"More specifically, it is an uncontrolled growth of plasma cells, which attack and destroy bone," reads the brochure for Fairmont MN Area Multiple Myeloma Support Group.

Darlene Roebbeke reads from Guideposts to her husband Darrell at their home in Fairmont. Their faith in God and a strong support network have helped them persevere through Darrells diagnosis with multiple myeloma.

Leading the meetings, held every other month at Mayo Clinic Health System's hospital classroom in Fairmont, is Joyce Schultz of Ceylon, diagnosed with myeloma July 2008.

For several years, Schultz suffered from back pain, but then severe fatigue set in.

"I started getting so tired, I felt like there was definitely something wrong," she said.

Tests showed she had high levels of calcium in her blood - a signature trait of multiple myeloma.

"God bless the doctor who found it, because he didn't even let me go home that day. He sent me straight to Rochester," Schultz said.

By the time she arrived, she couldn't remember the names of close family members. Further testing provided the culprit - myeloma, a rare cancer that is frequently confused with its sound-alike, melanoma.

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