Published in the IWMF Torch , November 2014, pages 15-18
*Updated January 2020* Jennifer Hoegerman’s life is, by every measure, an active one filled with parental and professional commitments, volunteerism of a challenging sort, an enthusiasm for the outdoor life whether sailing, canoeing, or riding her beloved Arabian horses, and a love of nature. Jennifer is also a nineteen-year survivor of Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia. A “younger WMer,” Jennifer was diagnosed when her children were young and before the era of Rituxan, a time when the strategy of watch and wait was not an option so frequently followed as it is today. Jennifer’s account of survivorship is not a report of one effective treatment that has held WM in abeyance for so long. Her account records how she faced the increasing challenges of WM as the years went by. It is also the account of how she successfully led her “real life” by combining modern medicine and alternative therapies down to the present when ibrutinib has provided new energy and enthusiasm. We may also appreciate the role played by the IWMF in Jennifer’s story when she refers to information acquired from IWMF-Talk and the fifteen Educational Forums she has attended, including Tampa in 2014.
Read Jennifer’s story here.
Published February 2020