'After 40 years apart, I reunited with my high school sweetheart. Then he went for a blood test.'

When Ralph Markham and Cathy Campbell were teenagers, there was a dividing line between the East and West sides of their city.

It was Winnipeg, Canada in the seventies, and Day Street in their suburb of Transcona was considered the boundary.

Cathy, a 'West End' girl, was friends with Ralph's girlfriend. Ralph was an 'East End' boy, and while Cathy recalls "always feeling safe" when Ralph was around, girl code prevailed and nothing more than friendship eventuated.

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After finishing school, Cathy went backpacking around Europe, where she met an Australian man, fell in love and moved to Melbourne.

Ralph, too, settled down and married, and over the next few decades the pair set about building their own lives and families — though never quite forgetting each other.

Every time Cathy went back to Canada to visit friends and family, she'd go through the list of people she once knew, wondering where the tall boy with the long flowing hair ended up.

Cathy and Ralph in high school. Image: Supplied.

A familiar face from 15,000km away.

Almost 40 years later in 2009, Ralph found himself going through a divorce. It was a few years since Facebook had been invented, and one day he saw a photo staring back at him from the screen that stopped him in his tracks.

"It was the first time I'd seen her since we were teenagers in the seventies," said Ralph.

"She was standing in front of an ancient old bridge in Richmond, Tasmania, and I thought: 'She hasn't changed a bit! If anything, she looks even better. She looks more beautiful than ever.'

Ralph reached out to start a conversation, and discovered that Cathy's marriage had also ended.

"We just naturally fell into banter," he said, while Cathy was suddenly reminded of the lyrics of a song that had seen her through some darker days.

"A long time ago, when I used to be involved in community theatre, I was involved in a show that had some original songs written in it," she recalled.

"One of the songs was called Somewhere In The World, Someone Loves You. I was pretty jaded just before I reconnected with Ralph, and every night, I would say to myself, 'It doesn't matter, because somewhere in the world, someone loves me'."

And suddenly, there he was.

After months of conversation and building up a friendship, the couple decided to take a leap of faith, and meet in Hawaii — halfway between Canada and Australia.

"It turns out, the chance was worth taking," said Ralph.

A second act worthy of a Shakespearean romance.

Fast-forward through six more cross-continental dates, and Cathy, who was taking part in a community theatre rehearsal, was called to the stage to practice a dance number.

Mid-way through going through the steps, she turned around to discover Ralph, down on one knee, ring in hand.

Of course, she accepted, and Ralph moved to be with her in Melbourne.

The intervening years were filled with travel, adventure, blending families and welcoming grandchildren.

"Oh, and renovating a house," added Ralph, "we put a lot of time and effort and money into getting our place up to standard, which, without knowing what was around the corner, turned out to be a smart decision."

Image: Supplied.

The news that turned everything upside-down.

Unfortunately, that thing lurking just around the corner was the news everyone dreads.

"The first sign that something was wrong came when I went to donate blood," said Ralph.

"In I went to the Red Cross in Frankston, and while they were hooking me up, they did some tests, and then they disconnected me and said: 'There's something wrong with your blood. Go see your doctor'."

It would be a year-and-a-half along with a suite of unexplained illnesses for, the usually-bulletproof, Ralph before eventually a haematologist would deliver the news in September last year: cancer.

Specifically Multiple Myeloma, a cancer that attacks the blood. More than 2,600 Australians are diagnosed with myeloma each year, with Australia having one of the highest rates of myeloma in the world.

"I'd never heard of it before," said Ralph, "I didn't write down the name of it, so in my head I was humming 'My-eloma' to the tune of 'My Sharona' to remember the name to tell Cathy."

Ralph's doctor informed the couple that they could have months — or years —depending on how well he responded to treatment.

It's now been over a year, but Ralph is no longer responding well enough to the first-line treatment, and needs a new option. He's hoping to qualify for a clinical trial which will begin shortly.

"The way I see it, whatever we can do to help the advancement of the knowledge about myeloma that will lead to a cure, I am ready to put myself on the line to help it," said Ralph.

"If that means going through the discomfort that's involved in clinical research, I'm willing to do that, because eventually, whether it be me or somebody else, somebody is going to benefit from this research."

It's also why myeloma experts are calling for greater public awareness of the disease that 22,000 Australians are currently living with.

"50 people a week are getting diagnosed with myeloma," explains Mark Henderson, CEO of Myeloma Australia. "27 per cent of people die within 18 months of their diagnosis. These are numbers that are very powerful, and not many people in the general lay community know about it."

New treatments are on the horizon though.

A new targeted drug called Blenrep has just been approved for use in Australia for people who have relapsed after initial myeloma treatment.

This month, it is being considered for inclusion in the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) which would make it accessible for patients who have exhausted other treatment options.

Known as a 'Trojan horse' treatment, Blenrep is the first drug of its kind to be approved for multiple myeloma and works by targeting and attaching to myeloma cells before killing them from inside.

"This new innovation is important and it does give another layer of hope," said Henderson.

"As we know, myeloma is not a one-and-done therapy. It's a lifelong treatment pathway, and our patient community does live in a sense of fear that relapse will occur at some point in the future.

"As the peak organisation in the country that represents our myeloma community, being able to go to them and tell them there's another option is very powerful."

For Ralph and Cathy, knowing Blenrep might be an option down the track, should Ralph's treatment team recommend it, it also offers hope.

"I think anything that will help the community and help us understand how this type of cancer works and advances the lives of these individuals, of us who are carrying it, I am wholly supportive of," he said.

"There are people here in the myeloma community, including the CEO of Myeloma Australia, who feel that the cure for this type of cancer is within our reach, and I hope to be alive when that cure comes."

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For Cathy, who says her main goal in life is to make Ralph laugh every day, the answer is much more straightforward.

"He's not allowed to die, because as he says, who will be there to open jars and reach high things?" she said.

Ralph is equally pragmatic.

"Cathy and I have our lives to lead. So we spend our time doing things together, doing things with family, trying to, trying to continue the experience of the things we love and the love that we have for each other," he said.

"It's not a matter of just carrying on, but it's carrying on to have a future together."

Feature image: Supplied.