End Of 2008 Report

In the spirit of our great business tycoons (well, at least of those who are not currently bankrupt or under indictment), I thought I would send along to you a year-end report on my current condition. And what a year it has been! In early September, I thought I was healthy man with a slight backache. By the middle of October, I was so racked with pain from myeloma and reactions to medicines that I sometimes wondered if I was dying. By November, thanks to velcade chemotherapy, I turned the corner, and by Christmas I was virtually pain-free: the best gift for which anyone could ask.

Velcade has literally saved my life. Besides the cessation of constant pain, it has beaten back the power that myeloma had to weaken bones. For example, from July to October, I fractured five of my ribs, at first by bumping them, but finally just by lying down a bit too hard on the table on which I was getting a radiation treatment. But no more broken bones from November to date, which is in itself a blessing.

I'm still a long way from cured, of which I am reminded every night when the lesions in my larger bones--especially the pelvis--begin to ache. I am receiving treatments that are promoting the healing of these lesions, but it takes time to fill them in--hence the evening aches. Still, I have begun to do things that would have been unthinkable even a month ago. I am up to as much as 30 minutes on the easiest setting of our elliptical exercise machine, and I have even started lifting weights on my weight machine, albeit at much reduced weight totals and at fewer repetitions than before I got sick.

The whole idea is to keep both weight and endurance up and strengthen muscle tone prior to the stem cell transplant coming up later this month at the Mayo Clinic. I'll have much more to report on that front as I endure it. For now, it remains to wish you all a wonderful 2009 (2008 was such a lousy year for us all that 2009 should seem like a vintage year without much effort). I have personally found new meaning in this season of thankfulness--for having the best wife in the world, for having family and friends who rally round at every opportunity, for having skilled medical practitioners who use the fruits of modern pharmaceutical research to save lives. My 2009 bring us more of the same in every category!