Getting started on the journey

I find it interesting that this idea came to me -- the idea of talking about our working through the various stages of this cancer -- the same evening that VP Candidate, Congresswoman, and Fox News Contributor Geraldine Ferarro was passing because of the same disease. She was diagnosed about the same time as Alan.

Alan and I met in 1959 and were married in 1966. Alan was diagnosed in 1999 with multiple myeloma (MM) and our lives were changed drastically. And I don't know how we could have gone through the near death experiences, the chemo, the follow-up, the never really feeling well, without the Lord Jesus Christ. He has been our strength, our peace, our mercy, our healer.

It has been a difficult time in our life. So many days have been spent in bed (Alan). So many days have been barely worth living through (Alan and Me). So many days where God has blessed with relatively good health and the ability to do things that we thought would be so simple at this time in our lives.

Alan was only 54 when he was diagnosed with MM, and the diagnosis was a fluke -- a merciful fluke. Alan had been having bad back pains and our doctor, as well as our heart specialist, said he had pleurisy. He was also having difficulty staying awake while he was driving the car.

One day I was rubbing my hand over his upper chest and I felt a bump -- a bump the size of a baseball -- sticking out of his chest. I told him he needed to get to the doctor right away. But since his mom was visiting, and he didn't want to interrupt her visit, he put it off the doctor's visit for a week.

I made him go to our doctor the day his mom left for her home in Pennsylvania. Our general practitioner took one look at him, sent him in for an MRI (immediately), which was read the same day, and he was referred to the best oncologist in Cincinnati (as far as we're concerned, and Cincinnati magazine agrees with us) who read his MRI, the PT scan of the lump and said Alan has multiple myeloma. Two days later we were traveling because of Dr. Cody's advice and recommendation, to Little Rock, AR to UAMS for one of their treatment trials (for MM).

When we first visited our Cincinnati oncologist (Dr. Robert Cody) we didn't go alone. We took a friend of ours who is a pharmacist with us. It was a great idea because he could ask questions about the disease and treatment that we wouldn't have thought to ask. Dr. Cody told us that Alan might have a year to live if we passed on any or minimal (comfort) treatment. If we went to Arkansas, he couldn't tell us how long Alan could be kept alive nor his quality of life, but the medical journals gave kudos to UAMS and their various treatments. They were actually looking at as long as five years life expectancy.

Alan has been alive now for almost 12 years!

I think I'll stop here and continue on another afternoon.

ttfn