February 25, 2010 Living in the Past

While watching the Olympics on Sunday, Al Michaels interviewed several members of the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” team that won the hockey gold metal. About midway through the interview both of the boys mentioned that they wanted to watch the movie “Miracle.” It really got me thinking about how much we enjoy thinking and reliving the past.

Last week I received a facebook request to add Denise Cline Derge as a friend. I about fell out of my chair. Denise and I dated for about three months during our senior years in high school. My best friend from fourth grade on, Mike Meixner, had been dating a girl from Fairborn High School for a while and I had been dateless for longer than I cared to think about so his girl friend fixed me up with Denise. We hit it off well enough to go to two proms together and actually “go steady” for a week. Boy, there is a term that our kids could not comprehend. They don’t even know what a date is anymore. They just get together and “hang.”

Because I went to an all male high school and moved away from Dayton after college, there really haven’t been any opportunities to reconnect with any of my old girl friends. I couldn’t just stop in at Fairview’s 30th reunion and check out Judy Bible. So it was great to talk to Denise again just to see how her life had gone. As they say, it was a “blast from the past.”

If you think about it, we constantly hang on to the past. I have XM Radio in my car and I more likely than not am listening to something that was popular anywhere from 1960 to 1999. (Current music dropped off the face of the earth for me around the turn of the century.) You hear a song and it immediately brings back a memory from the past; good, bad or indifferent. It was funny that Denise had contacted me because I heard the song “If” by Bread on the radio driving home the other day and it immediately reminded me of my long drives to Fairborn.

When the boys and I went through all of our old pictures during our clean-up phase of a month ago, we would often share a picture with one another and it was often accompanied with a “Remember when….” We all love to look at old pictures, often commenting on how young we looked at the time. Actually, we didn’t look young, we looked the way we should have, we just look old now.

After we found out that my dad had cancer in 1989, I borrowed Tim Loar’s video camera to record my dad’s thoughts about his life. (Tim and I go way back. At one time I interviewed him and turned him down for a job. Twenty years later he became my boss. God has a way of evening things up.) I now have seven hours of my dad reliving his life. When watching, you can see the ever present smile on his face as he relives not only the good times, but also the hard times.

I still utilize some of the sayings that my dad used that have long been forgotten by most. “Deader than a doornail” when referring to some road kill, “Hotter than a June bride in a feather bed” when talking about how hot it was outside, “Devil hates a coward” when we would be playing cards and he would make some wild move and my all time favorite when he wanted me to go play outside “go outside and get the stink blowed off you.” Not always the proper English, but they always got the point across. I have tried to pass these down to the boys to keep them alive after I’m gone, but they just haven’t grasped the concept.

Even though I have loved every stage of Justin and Jason’s lives, when Justin was five and Jason three has to be my favoritetime. They believed everything that I told them. I was still a god to them. I knew so many things that they didn’t, they probably thought I had an encyclopedia in my head. Now I’m just the guy with the wallet that 20’s fall out of. The guy that pulls the money off the money tree.

Since I have gotten sick, you don’t even want to know how many times I have longed for the first 56 years of my life when I was healthy. Certainly, some times are more desired, but just the fact that I couldn’t see the sands falling in the hourglass of life made living easier. But in many ways, I think that logic is a mistake. I think we all glamorize the past and miss out on how good the present is.

High school was fun, but I tend to forget all of the dances that I went to as a freshman and blended into the paint on the walls because I was sacred silly about the thought of asking a girl to dance. I fondly look back on college, but I tend to forget about the gargantuan set of nerves and the resulting trips to the bathroom that I had to face before every big test. Playing with the boys when they were young was a blast, but I tend to forget about the sleepless nights when they were sick or afraid of the thunder.

We all face difficulties in our lives and the most recent always seems like the worst, but in fact, they are not. Our lives are filled with ups and downs that we tend to minimize as the number of years increase. We all need to learn to enjoy the moment in which we live. In many ways, it can be the best time of our lives.

February 19, 2010 Delaying the Inevitable

In the last 10 months, the Mayo Clinic has become my second home. Not only did I spend two weeks vacationing there, but I have made in the vicinity of 50 other trips to visit to the Mecca of health care. I remember hearing about the Mayo Clinic decades ago and knowing that it truly was the place to go if you needed medical care. It is where people go when there seems to be no hope form anywhere else. Little did I know that I would eventually become one of their patients.

Last year there were roughly 20,000 people that were diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma. Of those 20,000, zero have been cured. That is a problem for all of us. The good thing is that there are advancements made every day in the fight against this disease. There was a recent release by the Mayo in Rochester, MN that talked about mapping out the genome of the disease.

http://discoverysedge.mayo.edu/multiple-myeloma-genomics/

It took a week on a super computer to actually get it mapped out so I doubt that I’m going to get a shot at it anytime soon. However they did study a woman that has had the disease disappear and reappear several times since her battle started. What they found was that the disease morphed each time it came back. Not too surprising in that viruses are famous for their ability to adapt to our defenses and come back strong.

The hope is that the more they know about the disease, the better they can fight it. The real truth is that it doesn’t have to morph to be different. I am a perfect example of how everybody’s disease is a little different. Matt Hare, who I wrote about a short time ago, just completed his transplant. He is going through the post transplant Hell that is inevitable no matter how much you believe it won’t.

During his chemotherapy treatment that he had before the transplant, he reached full remission with no MM found in his bone marrow. We both took the same chemo and took it for the same number of treatments. My particular brand of the disease proved to be a little more resilient and I only reduced me level to about 1/5 of what it once was. Then in the month before the transplant, it rebounded to three times that level. I obviously had a determined little bug in me.

The transplant is the equivalent of bringing in Batman and Superman to fight the bad guy. That is as good as it gets. It is the best shot at wiping out the disease in your system. Obviously, my bug brought along a bit of kryptonite because even the transplant didn’t wipe it out. Significantly reduced, but still hanging around.

However, the transplant did knock it for a loop as it hasn’t yet been able to rebound to previous levels. I have been able to remain in very good partial remission since the transplant. Not the ideal situation to be in, but certainly better than the alternative. Because of the roller coaster trip that my blood counts have taken, I have to return to the Mayo every month for another blood draw and visit with the doctor.

One of the scariest times that a cancer survivor has to face is that yearly check-up that confirms that the disease has been put to sleep, so to speak. I get to do that every month. Even though I feel great, I always have the fear that the MM has gained the upper hand. It is not a pleasant feeling. Today was the latest visit to the doctor to find out if my body is doing its job and keeping the disease at bay.

Luckily things have continued to improve. Since my high post transplant light chain mark of 9.45 in December, each test has shown a decrease with it now resting comfortably at 6.72. The lowest it has been is 5.98. I met with Angela Mayo (no relation) today, Dr. Mikhael’s physician’s assistant, and she gave me that latest good news. I now get to take a month off from the testing since it seems to have leveled off and I will go back in April. You have no idea how good that sounded.

She dropped another bomb on me when she told me that they have a patient that has had the disease for 16 years. Sixteen years!!! When I first got the disease, I wondered if I could do a deal to be assured ten years, would I take it. Not any more. If somebody else can do 16 years, so can I.

February 16, 2010 Making Mistakes

There are many jobs that we take on during our lives. We typically think that the job that we go to five days a week that actually supports the family is our most important job. In many ways it is; in many ways it isn’t. In my life, I have only had three of those “real” jobs. After I graduated from college, I worked at Timken for three years followed by nearly 30 at Ross Labs/Abbott Labs. I have just completed my second year at Isagenix which I hope will be the last of the “real” jobs that I have.

I have made a fairly good living at those jobs and I have been lucky enough never to have been out of work one day. The day after I graduated from UC, I started at Timken and didn’t take any days off between each of the other two jobs. Not many people are that lucky in life.

I have had other jobs along the way, none of which paid me a dime. However, in many ways, those other jobs were far more important and rewarding to me than the ones that paid. For 20 years I was a consultant for Junior Achievement and worked with over 1,000 high school students to give them a better idea of what it was like in the business world and away from the safety of home. Even though Jason might disagree with my value added to the equation, I was either a head coach or assistant coach for his baseball teams for five years. Teaching has always been important to me and probably my most important job centers on that task.

As I have mentioned more than a few times during my illness, one of my main concerns was that I wouldn’t be able to finish my job as dad. I’m not sure that job is ever finished, but I think the older you get the less help that you need from your parents, but that need always exists. That’s the rub, the child doesn’t always agree with that assessment and if you would ask Jason, I have a good idea that he might have some very specific thoughts on the subject. If I were given a performance appraisal for my last week of parenting, I’m not so sure that I’d be able to keep my job.

Baseball has always been a big part of my life and the only organized sport that I ever played. As often happens, both Justin and Jason spent a great deal of their youth playing the sport that “dad” loves. Luckily, they have both been very good at it and have generally enjoyed the twists and turns of their brief careers in the sport. One of my biggest joys in life is watching the boys play baseball. I have always looked forward to the spring and the resumption of the games. That all came crashing down just a little over a week ago.

With the success that Jason had playing football last year, there was a question as to if he had a chance to get significant playing time next fall. Unlike when I was in high school, the multiple sport star is a dying breed. To keep up today, you have to work at your sport virtually year ‘round. With an interest in both sports, Jason had a decision to make. Should he continue to play both sports for the high school and risk being left behind in both because of his inability to train for both or drop one and concentrate on the other.

Despite a great deal of persuading to the contrary, Jason decided to give up baseball. I was devastated. To get him to reconsider, I acted like the 10 year old that wasn’t getting picked to play in the neighborhood game and basically told him that I was going to take my football home with me. I was not going to let him play baseball in the summer. I was going to take away his Xbox and generally make his life miserable. At the time it made a lot of sense to me. In retrospect, not so much.

As parents, we always think we have the answer. We don’t want our children to make mistakes. When we see that a perceived mistake is about ready to be made, we jump in to try to save our child the pain associated with that mistake. At the same time, you have to watch that you don’t overstep your bounds which is what I did with Jason. Every once in a while, it is the student that teaches the teacher. He had some solid logic behind his decision that I just didn’t see at the time. If anyone made a mistake, it was me. I hope he holds off on that performance appraisal for a while.

February 9, 2010 Justin

As most of you know, I am an only child. You probably think that once my parents got a glimpse of me, they decided not to have any more children. On the contrary, I was so exceptional that they wanted to have more. At least that is what they told me. Unable to have another, I did my best to work the only child thing as long as I could. My mother felt that I was perfect. Not so sure she understood the full picture, but it was always nice to know she thought I was pretty good. My dad usually didn’t agree with her assessment, but that is another story.

Although I enjoyed the fruits of being an only child, I also suffered the pain of being the last of the Churans. I wasn’t allowed to get a bicycle until I was in the eighth grade. Do you know how hard it was to learn at the age of 13? My curfew was always early and I was rarely allowed to leave the yard growing up.

As a result, I was certain that I would never be the father of an only child. I always wanted three. Not sure why, but it just seemed like a good number to me. It was never my plan to wait until I was 38 to become a parent for the first time, it just happened that way. Children were always part of the plan and I couldn’t wait until my first was born.

Unlike, my mother, who had to wait 17 ½ years to get pregnant, Julia was a quick learner. The very first month that we decided to start a family, she became pregnant. Boy, was this going to be easy.

I had read enough over the years to believe some of the propaganda that you should enrich your child’s time in the womb by playing music and talking to the fetus. Because we wanted a child that was mild mannered, I decided that Julia should be listening to New Age music whenever possible. We had become fans of David Arkenstone and decided that our child should also. We even played it at the birth.

Being somewhat old fashioned, we did not press to find out the sex of the child before the birth. We picked out names, Justin Andrew and Jessica Alise so that we would be ready for the blessed event. So as not to prejudice the result, we never called the baby anything but “Ralphie” after the star of the movie “Christmas Story” which had come out several years before but was a favorite of ours.

It seems that either Ralphie loved to dance to the David Arkenstone music we provided or he was just a maniac. He was behaving just the opposite inside Julia as our music intended. It was not unusual to see Julia’s belly bulge out from a stray foot or fist. It almost became comical. It seems as though Ralphie never slept, there was always something punching Julia.

The day before Justin was born was like any other. It was a Friday and Julia and I even drove over to the West side of town to eye a Christmas tree that we had been watching the price hoping that it would drop. The store was closed but we still admired it through the window. You would think in February, they would be paying us to take it off of their hands. We would eventually buy it and it still is the tree that we use for Santa to “drop off” as Justin would later say.

Later that night we fell asleep on the couch watching TV, needless to say, we were relaxed. Julia awakened around 11 PM and realized that it was time. She very casually took a shower, shaved her legs and made herself beautiful. I ran around in circles accomplishing very little. Thankfully she didn’t tell me that the contractions were progressing fairly quickly or I would have run into a guardrail on the way to the hospital.

The birth was pretty uneventful but I’ll be honest with you, I really wasn’t very prepared. All I thought about was how special it would feel when I held my child for the first time. I just knew it would be an instantaneous bonding. Yet despite that build-up, it just didn’t happen.

Justin came out looking like a boxer that had lost a hard fought 12 round match. His nose was bent to the side and when he cried, one side of his mouth dropped down about an inch more than the other. I immediately started looking at the warrantee to see if there was a chance to trade this one in on a new one. When we commented on the obvious defects, the doctor just laughed and said he would look normal by the fourth or fifth grade. What had we gotten ourselves into?

It didn’t get any easier after we got home. He was colicky and cried all the time. I would have to lay on the floor next to his crib just to get him to go to sleep at night. Sleeping through the night was unheard of. For three months, we looked like the “Dawn of the Dead.”

Thankfully, after three months he settled down but he maintained his main fault which was spitting up. You could not hold him for more than 10 minutes without him spitting up and soiling your clothes. When we put him on the floor, there had to be a sheet, or the carpet would be ruined. Despite this problem, he was quickly becoming a Suma-sized baby. He had more chins than I had debts. The kid could eat.

We always felt that he has half alien in that he always did things early. He could hold on to my thumbs and stand on his own at one month. He had teeth at about four months. He crawled for only a month because he walked 3 days after his seventh month. He could walk across the room on his own five days later. This kid had more bumps and scratches than you could count because he wanted to walk everywhere before he really knew how to control his body.

As he grew older, he had more energy than Lance Armstrong. He was running everywhere. He would do summersaults non-stop. After his brother was born he constantly did cartwheels just to get attention. There wasn’t anything tall enough that he didn’t think about jumping off.

Many years later, we found out that he liked to put metal objects into electrical outlets once we felt it was save to de-babyize the house. How he is still alive, I’ll never know.

Even though I did not feel that instant bond when I held Justin for the first time it certainly got there soon there after. I just don’t know what I would do without both of my boys. They have created more challenges in my life than I could ever imagine, but I wouldn’t change one part of the last 19 years.

Justin no longer does cartwheels every time I bring out the camcorder, but he still brings a special joy to my life that I cannot describe. In many ways we have become great friends without making it unparentlike. I still yell at him when he does something wrong and praise him when he does something right. We often see things with the same eyes, but there have been more than a few times we have been on the opposite ends of the spectrum. In many ways we are a lot alike. Despite that, I love him more than he will ever know.

February 8, 2010 Chris Daniels

The date was February 8, 1996. It was going to be a very special day for Justin and myself. Since the next day was going to be his fifth birthday, I had scheduled something a little special for him. Justin’s favorite player on the University of Dayton’s basketball team was Chris Daniels. He was a 6’ 10” skinny African American kid from Columbus. After he had announced that he would be attending UD, I started following his high school career, even attending some of his games.

I had been a season ticket holder at UD for 7 or 8 years, but my seats were still up in the rafters. Every year I would check the little box on my season ticket application that I would like to move up if any seats were available. In those eight years I had moved one whole row closer to the action. I filled out the form, as always, hoping for good news. When the tickets arrived, I had only received one ticket, not the normal two and in a slightly different location. There had been a mix-up in the ticket office and my tickets had been sent to someone else.

In calling the ticket office, I spoke to the manager, Gary McCans. He assured me that we would work something out and I would always have tickets. As he worked that out, I was fortunate enough to sit by some of the parents of the players. One of those games I sat next to a rather tall African American woman who was certainly into the game. I finally grasped the fact that she was a mom of one of the players and we started a casual conversation. I came to find out that she was Chris’ mom.

It was Chris’ freshman year and he didn’t play much, but Alice Daniels came to all of the games and we became good friends. That friendship lasted all the way through Chris’ senior year when he finally exploded. He has averaging in double figures leading the NCAA in shooting percentage. He was no longer the skinny kid that I had seen in high school and was getting some looks from the NBA.

For Justin’s special treat, I had arranged for Alice to go to Dayton with us (sparing her the 90 minute drive each way) and then the four of us would go get something to eat after the game. Justin was so excited, he could barely sleep the night before. You see, Chris and he had struck up quite a friendship.

We would always wait around after the games and get Chris’ autograph and he would get to talk with him for a while. It was a cute picture, the tall black kid with the little towhead. We even stopped at Chris’ house on campus when we would be in town.

Chris was a special kid. Despite his huge popularity on campus and the pending professional career, he was just a sweet kid. He never let the fame or notoriety get to him. He was the kid next door.

It was cold that morning and I wasn’t looking forward to making the drive into work. I was just about ready to leave the bedroom when the phone rang. It was before 7 in the morning, never a good time to receive a call. On the other end of the phone was my best friend from High School, Mike Meixner. The words that sprang from his mouth were incomprehensible. Chris Daniels had died.

They were words that I could not grasp. They were words that I refused to believe. My hands shook as I dialed the phone to talk to someone at The Dayton Daily News to confirm the report. To my great sorrow, it was true, Chris Daniels had died at the age of 22.

Even though we knew we could do nothing of substance, Julia and I felt that we needed to go to Alice. We got in the car and drove to her house still in complete disbelief. Aside from her daughter, we were the first ones there. We just held Alice and cried. There was nothing else we could do.

Chris was buried just three days later and I cried uncontrollably at the funeral. I had only cried at my parent’s funerals before, but I felt that in a way I had lost my own son. Chris was the kid we want ours to aspire to. He was smart, considerate and loving.

Chris’ brother, Antonio, was to play a game later that week for Bowling Green University and debated if he could actually go through with it. Antonio, who would go on to a fabulous career and was the number four pick in the NBA draft of 1997. Through his own faith in God and Chris, himself, he decided to play. Bowling Green would defeat the number 23 team in the country that night on Antonio’s twisting layup. Antonio knew that Chris was there.

I spoke to Alice today as I have for the last thirteen years on this date. We remain friends to this day and share a love for one another that is hard to describe. She is a remarkable lady that has gone through a great deal during her life yet still has a smile and a kind word for everyone. I could not have a better friend.