Regular readers of Kevin Drum’s blog over at Mother Jones have been girding themselves for bad news ever since Monday, when he reported that he had to be taken to the ER. The proximate cause was a compression fracture in one of his lumbar bones, he wrote, but then added: “Without either oversharing or being coy, there’s a chance this could turn out to be pretty serious.” A few update posts from the hospital followed about various painful tests he was undergoing, but only yesterday evening did he share the diagnosis that the tests, alas, confirmed: multiple myeloma, a cancer of blood plasma cells.
The good news, he reports, is that the condition is treatable. But there’s no getting around the fact that Kevin, a Washington Monthly contributing editor and the former chief blogger here at Political Animal, has a tough road ahead of him. He should know (and I’m sure he does) that all of us here at the Washington Monthly, staff and readers alike, are thinking about him. So go on over to his site and leave a comment if you want, and marvel, as I did, at the post he wrote about the diagnosis. It’s classic Kevin: informative, precise, conversational, unsentimental, good-humored.
