MM Hereditary Or Not?

Something I keep wondering. Is Multiple Myeloma hereditary or not? I want to know because I want to know if Brandon will get it. I want to be able to teach him what he can do to relive pain. I want to be able to be there for him and know what he's going through should he get it. All, I believe, valid points. In recent months I've come to figure that MM is environmental. Not hereditary, since nobody in my blood family has had cancer.

Today one of my aunts, on my moms side, e-mailed me telling me how one of my great aunts (one of my grandma's, their mom's sister) was recently diagnosed with MM. She is at the beginning of her treatment. I've never met this great aunt. Honestly, I didn't know she existed. She lives in Ohio, far from here in Northern California. My aunt told me she told my great aunt about me and then told me her name and that she is on her friends list on Facebook. I sent a message and friends request and hopefully we can connect. I don't know anything about her. Her age or anything. Just her name, that she lives in Ohio, she's my grandma's sister, and was recently diagnosed.

Finding this out, it makes me wonder if MM is hereditary. So, tonight in Google search I typed in "Is Multiple Myeloma hereditary?" What I got was this...

"Multiple Myeloma is not considered hereditary, because the cause of multiple myeloma is not known. It is uncommon for myeloma to develop in more than one member of a family, as plasma cell changes are acquired, not inherited."

That is from the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, or MMRF. So, now I want to figure out, does this great aunt and I have the same plasma cell changes then? Can family members have the same plasma cell changes? It's interesting to me. Probably because I have MM and now I find a distance family member does too. It's something I am going to bring up to one of my doctors at my next appointment. Maybe both doctors. We have Stanford in November and back again to my Kaiser doctor in December. It's something I am going to be pondering for a while.