Update: 6 Years

A bone marrow biopsy will confirm it, but we are 95% sure that you have a blood cancer called Multiple Myeloma.

This past week we remembered that it has now been six years since we first heard those words from a very compassionate doctor at the Lethbridge hospital. Six years! The months that followed those were, I think, the most difficult of my life.  Heavy grief. Debilitating pain from cancer-crumbled vertebrae and fractured ribs. Long hospitalizations.  Future plans dashed. In those first days, everything we read about aggressive myeloma told us that the chance of survival beyond three years was around 65%, beyond five years less than 35%. If someone had guaranteed us 6 years, we definitely would have considered ourselves blessed.

And blessed we are. Research into treatments and possibly a cure have burgeoned in those years. I, by God's grace, seem to be riding the front edge of the advancements of that research. After a disappointingly short 30 month remission from my stem cell transplant, I was able to enrol in a phase two clinical trial of a brand new drug under development. When the myeloma charged back after about a year, I began receiving a triplet of drugs, one of which was brand new and therefore unfunded and in little use.  A providential phone call in which I spoke to just the right person at the right time helped gain access to this drug on a compassionate basis. Again, after a promising start and a partial remission, the myeloma showed up in numerous "hot spots' in my bone marrow in just over a year.

In January of 2024, another miracle. I was hospitalized for six days to begin my fourth treatment protocol, an immunotherapy treatment with a drug that only recently received a limited Health Canada approval. Once again, because funding was not yet established, I became one of only a few in Alberta to receive the treatment through the compassion program of the pharmaceutical company. Four months into that treatment (weekly injections), my cancer markers indicate a deep and effective response. We are #thankful for that and we are adjusting to the fatigue and extreme risk of infection that come as a side effects.

The other thing we are adjusting to is that when we started this treatment in January, we were told that at this moment there is no real effective treatment ready for my next relapse. This could be the last stand. That was not easy to hear. Once again, as it has been for six years, we need to remind ourselves to find the blessings in life and choose to live into the goodness of EACH day. At the very centre of that goodness is the unreserved love God has for us... and for you too!

May we all abide in that love, one day at a time. 

Now.... we have more garden to plant!