January 23, 2019--Living on Borrowed Time

We all borrow things. It can be anything from a neighbor’s wheel barrow, your sister’s recipe or going to the bank for a mortgage.  Most of us couldn’t get along without being able to borrow something on a regular basis. Just about everything can be borrowed at some point in time. However, time is not one of those things.

We wake up every morning thinking that we have an almost endless amount of time available to us. That is unless we have an assignment due that day or the trash gets picked up at 6:30 in the morning and you can’t afford to miss that pick up another week. Time is usually our friend but there are times when it is not.

It was exactly 10 years ago today that I found out that I did not have an endless amount of time available to me. It was 10:30 in the morning when I got a call from my brand new doctor that unless I got to the closest emergency room as soon as possible, I might be looking at only a handful of hours to live.

It seems that my kidneys had pretty much stopped working and my bloodstream had become poisoned by a potentially lethal amount of potassium. I didn’t know it at the time, but if you flood your system with potassium, you can very quickly have a heart attack. Although my dad had heart issues, I never had given it a second thought about my heart and its ability to continue beating.

That all changed very quickly after I got to the hospital and they drew some blood and found that I had enough potassium in my body to power a fertilizer plant should a little chloride be added.  Very quickly I was hooked up to a heart monitor with about ten wires attached to my body.  They said a baked potato at lunch would have done me in.

It seems that my heart was hanging in there pretty well so I was able to escape the telemetry unit in a day but was required to stay over the weekend to have a kidney biopsy completed on the following Monday.  It was that night that I was told that I likely had Multiple Myeloma. Within minutes I was on my laptop and searching the internet for information about this disease I had never heard of.

It didn’t take long to realize that I likely had cancer and was at an advanced stage.  I knew my kidneys were bad but little did I know that I had dozens of soft spots on my bones from the advance of the disease. If unchecked I had very little time. Even with the methods that were available at the time the average life expectancy was 27 months.

At the time, I was desperate for a solution, so much that I was willing to make a deal with God. Sounds crazy but I just wasn’t ready to die. God and I had a conversation and I asked Him to give me ten years.  I would be willing to give up anything longer than that just to be able to last that long. It seems that he heard me and gave me my ten years.

Apparently, he is willing to give me even longer. After ten years of trying different chemotherapies, we have found something that is working. Certainly no guarantee that it will continue to work but I have been on Venetoclax since March with Amazing results.  After nine other chemotherapies that had mixed results and being told by my doctor that I was running out of options, things fell into place.

In the ten years of this journey filled with winding roads and hills and valleys, I have had my good days and my bad days.  Most everyone I know sees the happy, confident me. Trust me, there have been days of tears and self-doubt. I have faced a blood test virtually every month wondering if this would be the one that shows a rapid decline. Even after 10 months of great results, I still wonder every month if this will be the one that begins to go sideways.

Yet, so far, so good. I remain healthy and hoping for more.  It has all been through the grace of God, great doctors, amazing medicine and the friendship of many.  I have had prayers from so many people in so many countries and so many religions I can no longer count. 

My journey on borrowed time has been amazing and I want to thank you all for caring. Maybe God will forget our bargain and give me another ten.