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How do you detect it and what is the diagnosis. >> about 1% of cancers of multiple myeloma. unfortunately 10,000 people die from this. it starts from bone marrow. a lot of people don't know what it is. it's the soft part in the middle of the bone. theso the simple way to think of this is the federal bank. you have dollars and euro. when you print out a lot of dollars, the value of the others go down. that's what happens in the bone marrow. you start producing a lot of plasma cells. it's a cancer of plasma cells that are supposed to make the soldiers to defend us, but they are going out of sync...

Want to kill all the various cells within the bone marrow. you want to kill out the plasma cells, which are the cancerous cells and recreate the marrow. it's a long involved process. that's the type of treatment he's undergoing. >> it that chemotherapy? >> it's a type of chemotherapy. the chemotherapy is targeting the cells within the bone marrow. the problem is you need good cells in the bone marrow. white blood cells, red blood cells, platelets. eventually you have to give those cells back to the body. if for a time period the patient doesn't have enough cells and you have to eventually give...

Cells within the bone marrow. you want to kill out the plasma cells, which are the cancerous cells and give more cells to re-create the bone marrow. it's a long involved process. that's the type of treatment he's undergoing. >> it that chemotherapy? >> it's a type of chemotherapy. the chemotherapy is targeting the cells within the bone marrow. the problem is you need good cells in the bone marrow. white blood cells, red blood cells, platelets. eventually you have to give those cells back to the body. if for a time period the patient doesn't have enough cells and you have to eventually give tho...

They x-ray all the bones and do blood tests that will give you an indication as well that you are dealing with multiple myeloma. it's definitive after that. >> what is the treatment? how do you deal with multiple myeloma. some are more aggressive than others. what is the treatment that tom brocaw is going through? >> the goal of treatment is to basically try to kill the cells in the bone marrow that cause the problem. the plasma cells. the problem is you don't want to kill the good cells as well. this is a problem with a lot of cancers. kill the bad things, try to leave the good things intact....

This is known as plasma cells. you make too many of those and they start reproducing. that's what the cancer is here. two things happen. one is the plasma cells can cause problems in other places, but it crowds out the good cells. the red and white blood cells. those are the two problems. this particular type of cancer, again, multiple myeloma is known for the damage that it can cause to bone. we have a picture of what that looks like. these are very specific lesions. you can see them here with the holes in the skull. that's a result of the multiple myeloma. that's one of the most common thing...