Jimmy Bolen

Top left: Dr. James L. Bolen; top right: Dr. Sagar Lonial; lower right: Dr. Rein Saral

Jimmy and I are spending most of our time these days in rooms populated by cancer patients and their caregivers. On some of their faces, you can see the stunned, bewildered expression of the newly-diagnosed, and on others, battle-hardened warriors like we are, a numbed, weary acceptance, but the common thread that runs through it all is hope. Hope is a great thing to have, but you also need to be in the right place, with the right team of doctors.

Not many days go by that Jimmy and I don't talk about how fortunate we are to be here at Emory. When this life-shattering bomb falls on you, you're so shocked and frightened and confused, you don't know where to turn. We ended up taking the advice of our friend, Jimmy Bolen, and we will be eternally grateful to him for pointing us in the right direction, and getting involved on our behalf.

Jimmy Bolen went to Valdosta High School with my Jimmy, then on to Emory, and later to medical school at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. He's married to the former Phyllis Giles from Valdosta, and is Virginia Bennett's brother, and Leigh Pendleton Smith's uncle. He lives in Orlando, where he is a cardiologist. As bright a person as you'll ever meet, he's a whiz kid in both medicine and business, is energetic and gregarious, and has tons of friends. He and Phyllis have a house near ours in the Bahamas, so Jimmy and I see them fairly often there.

A few days after we found out that Jimmy had multiple myeloma, Jimmy Bolen called. "I hear you've got some problems," he said. " Do you want a second opinion? I think you need to talk to some people at Emory."

Within hours, Jimmy (Dewar) was on the phone with Dr. Rein Saral, oncologist and chief medical director at Emory (and with whom we had had dinner several times in the Bahamas, when he and his wife were there as guests of the Bolens), and with Dr. Sagar Lonial, who is recognized as one of the top hematological oncologists in the world for multiple myeloma. Only last month, the Multiple Myeloma Research Consortium (MMRC) gave Emory Hospital and Dr. Lonial the 2007 MMRC Center of the Year Award.

We hate it that Jimmy got this awful thing, but it's the journey we're on now, and every day we find so much to be thankful for, not the least of which are good friends like Jimmy Bolen, and this wonderful medical community we've become a part of, here at Emory.