About having a US Marine Spirit

I was on a bicycle ride today. For those of you who have read my previous blogs.. you know that's when I think. I'm still in the wait mode until December 11th for my first specialist visit in San Francisco. I'm getting into good shape, for what is to come. Now I really don't know how long of a time that will be. It could start right away.... or I guess up to several years. That time frame will be up to Dr. Martin...and the cancer, of course. My local oncologist told me to get in shape and keep in shape, for when I need it...to be ready. I'm following orders.

That brings my thoughts back to when I was an active duty Marine. We spent a LOT of time just being ready. Training in our jobs, staying in shape, keeping the mind and body ready for ??? It is the same now. What the future holds for me isn't in my hands. It is in myeloma's hands. I need to be ready for the fight. If I start that fight in December '09 or December 2012 I'll be ready.

I feel that God has reasons he puts you in situations. I was never a BIG guy. I wasn't an aggressive type. I never really played sports. Why did I CHOOSE the Marine Corps? Was I crazy, any other service would be easier!!! Well, Jenni lived in Yuma and the Marine base is in Yuma, that is in the duh category. But the Marine Corps taught me to work through whatever they threw at me. That was the exact words my oncologist used. Get in good shape and you will be ready for whatever I throw at you! Maybe that was also a reason I choose to be a Marine. Why God placed me there.

I know how to do this. I know how to stay focused on the task at hand. I know how to not get distracted, no matter how long I wait. THANK YOU to all the Marines who taught me those lessons! !! Who were hard on me, when in my weakness, when I wanted to quit. Who taught me if I worked hard, and didn't quit, they would be there helping me through the task. Just like now!!!!

I will stay ready, and fight when the time comes, just like a Marine.


The body is sick, but thanks to Jesus the soul is alive and well... Steven

Some of the waiting is done.

I've got my appointment at UCSF on December 11, finally... Seems like it has been years since I was diagnosed with this MM. It really has only been just over one month. Jenni and I have made plans to go to San Francisco the night before, stay at a hotel and then the next day do our Christmas shopping, or whatever is left to do. Jenni is a major planner type person and buys stuff a little at a time starting in November. Jenni's been going to all my Dr. appointments. I kinda feel the reverse of when she was having our 2 kids. I wanted to go to each and every Dr. appointment with her. I wish she could come to my appts. for 9 months and then we could be done!!! It is nice having her there.

I've focused on the exercise thing really hard. Building those bones for when I get farther along with the cancer. I'm tracking my bike riding and I do Yoga on my "off" riding days. Jenni is getting me the Biggest Loser Boot Camp DVD so I can mix it up some. I'm feeling better than I have in a long time. That brings me back to where I am with the MM. It doesn't feel real! I know my numbers on the paper, I know what the Dr. said, I know that they wouldn't bother a MM specialist at UCSF with out it being real, but that being said.. shouldn't I "feel" something? No, my brain understands that I can have this and at this point have no symptoms. But my heart just wants it all to be a mistake. Don't get me wrong, I'm not depressed, not in denial, not scared... it is just a strange feeling to know your sick and feel this GOOD! I'll take this feeling good as long as God lets me.

I'll know more, I'm sure, after I get back on the 12. I'll blog on Friday night Dec. 11 what I have learned.

My MM friend Karyn is fighting hard and along with fighting it she has a major move to Texas soon. Keep her in your prayers. She is doing a good job working on the side effects of treatment. I hope I can follow her lead when the time comes.

That's about all for right now. I'l keep blogging as things happen etc..

The waiting continues...

I'm still waiting for UCSF to call for my Bone Marrow Biopsy. I know that I'm only Stage 1, not high on the priority list, but I'm really not good at waiting. I have to call my oncologist every Monday morning until I have a date and time for the appointment. I really hope it is next week.

What I've done in the meantime is do research on Multiple Myeloma. Almost all the blogs and most of the web sites recommend you do that to get ready to start fighting. What I have found out is NOTHING is standard for this cancer. It is as different as each patient it attacks. Some patients are hit with bone lesions. Then there are the ones who have their kidneys fail, add to that the ones who's blood cells are compromised and they have anemia, to name a few. You can get these complications alone or in combinations. Then you read about the patients who respond very well to treatment and others that don't do so well. Each week there are patients who lose their fight with this cancer :-(

All that being said I do feel blessed to be stage 1. Most of the people's blogs I have read were diagnosed when they had one of the above symptoms. What I have learned is that, by the time the symptoms are there, you are way far along and bad things are already happening. I at least get the opportunity to start fighting, just the cancer, and not the bad things that happen when you are stage 3!!!

One thing I have discovered is a whole new idea of "manageable". I have heard a lot that this cancer is now manageable. It creates and image of a person who takes a pill or changes their diet and goes on happily with life. I have had a LOT of people who say things like " I have a friend, family member that has MM and they are managing it just fine". Now, that I have met people who have this cancer, I know it is not that simple. They are sick, very sick at times. Their reality of this cancer management is chemo therapy, radiation, bone marrow transplants, with all the yucky side effects. Being so tired that they can't even take a small walk outside. They have large IV's in their chests, all the time, for medication access, or they are on dialysis and that takes over their lives. The list of side effects is long and everyone I have met have, at least, has several of them. I have also caught myself saying those words to friends and family, "This is a very manageable cancer". You don't go into details and end it with a smile and confidence. I guess that is all you can do. They are doing their best to be supportive and uplifting. They don't need to understand and I guess it isn't very nice to frown and give them a reality check. If I did give them a reality check each time, I could see myself in a short time being very alone!!! Who wants to be around a person who does that!

Because of the above paragraph I have come to cherish the MM friends and bloggers I have found since I got diagnosed. I can understand where they are in their treatment and sometimes, just sometimes, give them back some small support. I know that the support will come back to me sooner or later. That is comforting... For me they aren't a downer, even though I wish I didn't have to get to where they are. It puts my mind where it needs to be, in reality. I can deal with the stuff I know about. I don't like surprises or false candy coating of the situation.

So I will continue to wait until I can go to UCSF. It will get here, soon enough.

A surprise

Jenni and I have the best marriage of anybody I know. We really love and care for each other and have NEVER even got close to talking about real marriage problems. That being said I think we had come to a place where we were comfortable. As I start walking down this road, with Jenni, I have come to a realization... God is bringing us closer together, more than we have been together in a long time! Let me explain...

I had a low point at the first of last week and Jenni had a melt down at the end of the week. Read the previous blog posting. It was hard but it was necessary. A new friend of mine,Karyn, spoke of a book... "Five Love Languages". I'm not a reader... In fact the last book I sat down and read was about 15 years ago and it was a book on time and space...More a research book. Well I told Jenni about it she went and brought it home the next day. No surprise there as she reads everything she get her hands on. I said I wanted to read it. She gave me the “look”, you know the one I’m talking about.. “You have lost your mind and you really won’t do this”. “You haven’t read a book in 15 years, and that was a research book”!! So last Friday I got in my recliner and I started to read. I couldn’t put it down. As I read the book I started thinking about who I was, who Jenni was and how we handle our marriage. We started to talk, really talk like we haven't talked in years!

Our kids wanted to try a new church. It was in the evening from 5 to 7PM. I have to tell you the truth. You normally have to use dynamite to get me out of the house on Sunday evening. Jenni kept saying that “she wanted to go with the kids to the Stirring and that I didn’t have to come if I didn’t want to”. Well it is strange but I wanted to come. It never crossed my mind not to come. She thought that attitude was strange but she just smiled and enjoyed my decision to go.

He preached on relationships and feelings and how God set up marriage. I have heard the sermon dozens of times in our life together. This time it was different. It was new, and it was exciting. Jenni and I kept holding hands, looking at each other KNOWING God was teaching us something, right then and there!! Then he referenced the book “The Five Love Languages” and we both smiled, and chuckled at each other.

Now, I’m a Christian and do my best to follow my Savior each and every day. Most of the times he gently guides me on my way. Sometimes, not very often, he hits me right between the eyes with a brink. This was one of those times. What I told Jenni, once we got alone in the car after the service, was “I feel sorry for non-Christians because they never know the joy of understanding when God does something like this in their life”. I got Myeloma that caused me to meet Karyn who referenced a book. I don’t read but I stopped and read that book. We made some personal life changes because of the book. We then went to a new church and the pastor spoke about God, relationships and that BOOK! It all happened in about 5 days! It was crystal clear to me at least one thing God wants out of this. He wants a stronger, more loving, deeper relationship between Jenni and I. Who am I to argue with God?

Back to the diagnosis of Multiple Myeloma, I haven’t prayed for healing. I guess that would be the normal thing to do but I haven’t been lead down that path. What I pray for is that God would do something positive with the diagnosis. That he would use it, and me, for whatever “HE” had planned for this.

Although I’m not sure what God will bring to me with this cancer, I know that there has been and will continue to be a big positive from it. I will live that positive, with Jenni, for each and every day I have left…

PS.. I’m expecting it to be a LONG time…God willing.

My Husband Really Does Have MM (The Long Version)

Hi, this is Jenni, Steve’s wife. I have my own family blog and I’ve thought about posting some of my feelings about Steve’s MM there, but it didn’t seem like the place for it. I also thought about starting another blog like Steve’s, a place for my thoughts about the diagnosis and what will come, but I don’t feel like I need a whole blog for that at the moment. So Steve said I could occasionally post here when/if I feel the need.

Be forewarned, I tend to write enough for a book sometimes, but it’s cathartic to get it on paper so kudos to anyone who reads this and makes it through to the end.

The “C” word is a funny animal. When I hear about someone I know who’s been diagnosed with some form of cancer, my first thought is how bad I feel for them; my immediate second thought (in all honesty) is I’m so glad it’s not me, or worse, someone in my immediate family! I have a friend whose husband has battled prostate cancer for the past year and a half or so. He’s doing well now, but is not out of the woods by any means. I have a past co-worker of mine who found he has Stage IV cancer in his colon, liver and lungs. He is in his 40’s with a young wife and 3 little boys about 7 and under. I can’t imagine… My aunt is in her 60’s with young grandchildren. She has but weeks, if not days, to live with a past breast cancer that has now spread to her lungs and brain. I hurt for them, I pray daily for them. And yet it hadn’t touched any closer to us than that, which was close enough for me.

But now it is someone even closer to me than an extended family member or a good friend. It’s my husband, the person closest to me, the main person that I’ve spent 30 years building my life around.

The “C” word has invaded our world. We’ve heard that you can live a long time with MM, but we’re learning that while that can be true, it can just as easily not be true. This is not a cancer that has a normal track record, it’s different for each person. It’s been hard knowing how to tell family and friends about it because in the beginning I told them what I felt was the truth, that it’s not that big of a deal, that “someday” we’ll have to deal with it but it’s very manageable for now. Then we realized that this may or may not be the case, but you don’t want to overreact and tell people it’s worse than it is so you reach a point where you almost don’t want to say much more about it other than, yes, he has MM, we’re doing fine with it at the moment, and that we’re still learning about the diagnosis.

So for now, we do more tests, learn what we can about where Steve is headed and try to find a new “normal.” For now, he’s symptom free and we vacillate between feeling like it’s not real, to feeling the reality of it all as we uncover more information about MM.

I’ve been feeling weirdly detached from emotion about it so far, like it was surreal, something happening to someone else. But this week, I finally had a meltdown that apparently had been building up for awhile, and Steve was the lucky recipient of it all.

I think for me, it was as though too many things had hit at once. Steve (working in the finance/banking industry in this lovely economy we’re in) has been laid off twice in a 2-year period, which obviously has been pretty stressfull all on it’s own! Neither of us had ever been laid off before and to say it’s unnerving is an understatement! The job loss also took our health insurance with it and we purchased a private policy of health insurance just 3 weeks before his MM diagnosis. We’re thankful for the insurance we almost decided against, but we’ve wondered, will it be enough for what’s to come?

Also during this 2-year period, he’s had a couple of episodes of health issues, first meningeal encephalitis about 18 months ago requiring hospitalization (this from someone who has hardly EVER been really sick in our 30 years of marriage), and now the MM diagnosis. Oh, and let’s not forget having to put our dog to sleep the same week as Steve's diagnosis. I think the MM diagnosis was the (very large) straw that broke the camel’s back for me. I had put my emotions and thoughts on the back burner for a few weeks and – kaboom! The dam broke.

As I told my son on a facebook email, I was feeling angry about the MM, the worry over not-so-great insurance possibilities, the job issue, etc., but I wasn’t sure whom I was angry with?

Was I angry with Steve? Some, which made absolutely no sense except that Steve has always been the one to help me “fix things” and neither the job situation nor the MM is something he can just fix.

Was I angry with God? Yes, I was.

Was I angry at myself? Yes, for feeling that way about Steve, God and my lack of stronger faith in the first place.

I’ve been dealing with God-anger issues occasionally for a few months now, watching job rejections come and go with employers never even getting to the interview stage. Steve had been job-hunting for well over a year at this point (most of it while he was on his last job that he knew was going to come to an end). Even with my prayers of faith in God, knowing that He had a plan, I was beginning to feel forgotten. But I stuffed that way down deep, kept praying and kept working on projecting faith. Then comes the MM diagnosis and the other night, during the big kaboom, I told Steve that while I know the Bible tells us we’re NOT forgotten and that HIS plan may not be MY plan, I was tired of hearing that. I was not able to believe that truth at that moment. I was also tired of hearing that we are so blessed, that we could be that co-worker, or my aunt, or…fill in the blank.

Don’t get me wrong, I know all of that is true in my head, but my heart just wasn’t on the same page at that point. It was so hard to know what was truly upsetting me because all of the issues (the MM, the job, the insurance, etc.) seemed like they were all rolled into one, big, messy ball of “stuff.” I just couldn’t sort it out.

My son’s answer on facebook to me was: “Does God have a plan? Yes, but the bigger truth is one that I have struggled with over the past couple years, but it’s just true, which is that our lives are meant to glorify God regardless of our circumstances. Difficulty and pain are part of the human experience, and they are used to help us identify with Christ, who endured great suffering for the sake of God’s plans. It is okay to have anger with God, as long as at the end of the day we lean on Christ to get us through to the other side. I think for living with the understanding that God does NOT promise good things will happen in our life has helped me deal with my struggles, because all HE really promises us is that if we seek Him, we will find Him, and especially when that’s all we have.”

I’m learning things about myself, not necessarily good things and not necessarily things I wanted to learn. I am impatient. I want it my way. And I really, really don’t like relying on God to reveal a plan to me when I think I have a better plan. And yet, now that I’m more sane again, I know that having me in charge would have the makings of a disaster and I can appreciate that God DOES indeed know what he is doing, even if I don’t understand it.

Today, I’m better for the “kaboom.” And, Steve survived it too. ;) Actually, it opened up some good discussion with us, paved the way for us to draw closer about all the things I’ve had building up in me. And I think God might still love me too, even though. Because the Bible tells me so.

I’m working on appreciating my life again, on giving it back to Him, letting Him call the time frames on Steve’s MM, Steve’s job search, and everything that happens in our lives. I’m learning lessons I didn’t want to learn, but that God has seen fit to teach me.

My son gave his first sermon a few weeks ago and at the end of it, he played “Untitled Hymn,” by Chris Rice, a favorite of mine. But when I heard it that Sunday, it spoke in a stronger way to me. The words are:

Weak and wounded sinner, Lost and left to die,
O, raise your head, for love is passing by,
Come to Jesus, Come to Jesus, Come to Jesus and live!

Now your burden's lifted, And carried far away,
And precious blood has washed away the stain,
So sing to Jesus, Sing to Jesus, Sing to Jesus and live!

And like a newborn baby, don't be afraid to crawl,
And remember when you walk, sometimes we fall...
So fall on Jesus, Fall on Jesus, Fall on Jesus and live!

Sometimes the way is lonely, And steep and filled with pain,
So if your sky is dark and pours the rain,
Then Cry to Jesus, Cry to Jesus, Cry to Jesus and live!

O, and when the love spills over, And music fills the night,
And when you can't contain your joy inside,
Then dance for Jesus, Dance for Jesus, Dance for Jesus and live!

And with your final heartbeat, Kiss the world goodbye,
Then go in peace, and laugh on Glory's side,
And fly to Jesus, Fly to Jesus, Fly to Jesus and live!

I know that without Him, we are weak and wounded, lost, but the victory is in Him. In this world, which will have it’s share of joy and sorrow, strength and pain, we can fall on Him. We’re here to live for Jesus, show His love, and then someday fly to Him as He promises. When it’s our turn.

I know because the Bible tells me it’s so.

And for right now, today, so does my heart.

It hit me...

Don't know why it was today... Except I read a blog that was linked from Karyn's blog site where Andre had just passed away from this cancer. I'm sitting here with wet eyes and thinking about how hard this must be for the ones he left behind.

I guess it had to happen sooner or later. I guess now is as good a time as any. It does make me want to get up and go do something to help them. Give them a hug.. However; they live in Washington state, that's a long drive!!!

I guess I'll go on a bike ride and put all this together in my head. Bike riding is also good processing time for this kinda stuff.

I'm back from the ride...

Sorry for the self pity moment. I was going to just delete it and go on but I promised myself this blog would be honest. So here is the truth...

I went on a bike ride last Friday. It was the longest one yet and my fastest ride yet. I was feeling mighty smug... I can do this on my own... HEY everybody look at me!!! I was tired.. I knew I needed a rest day so on Saturday I rested... But that wasn't all... Pancakes in the morning, BIG lunch and a killer dinner. Then Sunday hit... Pizza for lunch, cake and beer at my son's house, snacks and a BIG dinner. This morning I got up and it all showed on the scale. I was fairly down on myself. But hey... I'm the guy with cancer who would fault me for taking a break!!!

I don't know why I read Andre's blog... I just felt I had to. My eyes watered up and I knew I needed to get on the road. There are 2 hills on the ride I choose. Not big hills but I hate hills so they are a challenge. I bet I said "fight" to myself a thousand times up those 2 hills. I knew, at that point, it wasn't that I just took a break from fighting this weekend... I was trying to do this on my own. I can't do this by myself. I need the Lord to be there with his strength.

It is going to be easy to fight when I feel good. When I'm rested and ready to go. It is easy to feel smug when I'm feeling self important. But with my limited strength I will fail. When things get tough and I need a break... nobody will fault me for that. The only one that I will let down is myself, and my God. I will work hard to trust the Lord and rely on his strength. He said he will be there for me. He just spend the last 3 days proving it to me!