That is concerning for people like Kathy Gilchrist, who lost her husband Martin in 2021 after a five-year battle with myeloma.

"I've been through the process, and it's not known widely enough," she said.

"You have a 54 per cent survival rate after five years - so it's up there with ovarian cancer and other ones that take a lot of people.

"It's predominantly males that get myeloma, around the age of 50 to 70."

John Vandeven was diagnosed in 2020 through a bone marrow biopsy, spurred by the detection of amyloidosis - the build up of amyloid proteins - in September of that year.

"It fatigued me something shocking - I had good days and bad days," he said.

"I had 12 months of treatment on chemo, and that's certainly helped me be able to cut my treatment back from weekly to fortnightly and I feel a lot better for that.

"Our cancer centre is fantastic, all the nurses are lovely and you get treated so well."

Steve Hogg has also been receiving treatment for myeloma over the past four months at the Albury-Wodonga Regional Cancer Centre.

"The services they provide make it so much easier," he said.

"It's not curable, but you can suppress it."

Mr Hogg and his wife Linda joined Mrs Gilchrist, who is a family friend, Mr Vandeven and about 20 other people during Sunday's "3.8 With a Mate" walk for Myeloma Australia.

Members of the Rotary Club of Wodonga West, which brought the national event to the Border for the first time, joined the group along with Brave Hearts Dragon Boat Club Albury Wodonga, which Mr Vandeven's wife Sue is a member of.

The well-known member of NSW Fire and Rescue said he had received great support from his employer, his fellow volunteers at Lifeline and the general community.

"This does help to spread the message further - it's 3.8 for a mate because 38 people are diagnosed a week," he said.

"I don't want people to feel sorry for me or for this disease to define me ... but if I'm going to help someone, I don't mind people knowing.

"No matter symptoms you have or whatever it might be, people need to get tested if someone different is happening.

"I just had swelling of the legs and was holding fluid.

"You can get brittle bones, I'm lucky my bones are still going well."

Mrs Gilchrist echoed the call for people, particularly men, to be on alert for symptoms, which include bone pain, tiredness and recurrent infections.

"It's usually males that think that it's a sporting injury and they're less likely to check it out," she said.

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"Unlike other cancers, it strikes your whole body, and you can't radiate your whole body like you could with breast cancer or something like that.

"It affects your bones and your day to day living in a really huge way.

"We need more awareness."