May 2, 2010 Will You Remember Me?

There are many things that motivate us in life. For some it is money or position or just having things. For others it is doing for others. I think for most though, that motivation can change as we begin to understand our mortality. All of a sudden here is one question that we all ask ourselves and that is “Will I be remembered?”

Two weeks ago, the boys and I traveled to Columbus for a number of reasons but number one on the list was to get family pictures taken. All of Julia’s family was to meet in Columbus on Saturday to be photographed. Julia’s mom, Fran, wanted to get the family together and I was 100% behind her. I’m not sure if her motivation was the same as mine but before I went into the hospital for my transplant, I wanted to make sure that there was a recent picture of me and the rest of the family. There was a very small chance that I could die from the chemo or an ensuing infection and I wanted to be remembered as I was, should that happen.

There are a small number of people that will be remembered for their feats long after they pass from this earth. Actors, actresses, singers, politicians and history makers of other sorts such as Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth and Attila the Hun will all long be remembered for what they did. Other’s may do it through their success in certain fields or by how much money they donate for certain causes. The rest of us will never have books written about us or have our songs or speeches replayed after we die. We have to be remembered for the small things that we did.

When I die, I know that there will not be a mention on the evening news or an article in the paper. A year later, they will not be coming out with songs I recorded years ago that weren’t good enough to sell at the time but are now thought good enough because I am dead. My family will not be able to sell my image for millions of dollars. The only people that will remember me are the ones that I personally touched through my life.

As I get closer to that time, I wonder if I have made a difference? Have I changed people’s lives for the better? Don’t get me wrong, this is not a call for an outcry of what a great guy I am. This is a question that only I can answer. I think I am a good dad and a decent husband but I wonder beyond that what have I changed?

In our lives, we touch dozens of people every day. Some are no more than a “hi” while others may be far more intense. If you are in a position such as a minister or coach or guidance counselor, the opportunities can be endless. For those of us that are not in “people” type positions, that “touching” is a little more difficult.

I think I have done some things over the years that I am proud of. I was associated with Junior Achievement for 20 years. I taught over 1,000 kids and I helped provide over $50,000 in scholarships to dozens of those students through fund raising. I think that I have helped a few kids with my coaching on the ball field although there are a few dads that might argue that point.

I guess more important than that are the little things that we all do to people that we don’t even know. I have never been a waiter, but I have noticed when I ask a waiter or waitress how they are doing they not only seemed surprised that I asked but are very happy that I did. I have always tried to be nice to people in all walks of life. I am just as friendly to the people that do the housekeeping at work as I am the Vice Presidents.

I don’t know that it matters one way or another to them, but I try to appreciate what all people do, no matter what their station in life is. Am I making a difference in anyone’s life by doing this, I don’t know, but I can only hope.

I started writing this blog to get the news out about what I was going through, but I eventually had some other motivation. I was hoping that I could get people to get a physical every year. I think I have had some success, but how many of you reading this have had one in the last 12 months? If I hadn’t gotten one, I might not be here to write this. I also wanted to possibly help some other people that were suffering from an illness and show them that there is hope at the end of the tunnel. Disease, no matter how difficult, can be defeated.

But I think the biggest reason that I wrote this blog was to have something left behind when I was gone. I want my kids to remember me for something other than grounding them for life every once in a while. Or for making them clean their room at least once or twice a month. I really wanted them to see me in a different light than they do everyday.

Before my dad died, I had him sit down and talk about his life. I videoed seven hours of him talking about his life and his thoughts. Every once in a while I pull that out and watch a bit of it. I wish I could have done the same thing for my mother. At least he spends a good deal of his time talking about her. It is something that keeps me connected and helps me remember them.

What I hope is that I have done that with a few people over the years and that I will be remembered when I die, if that is tomorrow (you never know when you might get run over by a bus) or in 25 years. I hope I am remembered for being a good person that might have changed a few lives for the good. Keep those thoughts in mind when you go to bed tonight. What did you do to make someone’s life just a little better today? When it is your time, you may want to be remembered, too.

April 23, 2010 Baseball

My first recollection of sport was in 1961 when the Reds were battling the Dodgers for the National League pennant. About the only way that you could follow the games back then was on the radio. Seeing a game on TV was rare. One of the Reds announcers was Waite Hoyt who had pitched for the Yankees during the glory years with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

It as a time that you would sit by the radio while reading or playing board or card games. There were only two TV channels in Dayton and only black and white TV. You would actually pray for rain delays because Hoyt would begin to talk about his days with the Yankees. Certainly I was no fan of the Yankees but to hear him talk about what they did and how they did it made me fall in love with the sport.

It was a game perfectly suited for me because it was a game that wasn’t in a hurry and was all about strategy and numbers. God, I loved those numbers. I would memorize the backs of baseball cards and create my own All-Star teams with the stats from those cards. Because my parents owned a grocery store, I had a field day with packs of baseball cards. I actually collected one full set when it was nearly impossible to do. Baseball was my game.

It was the one game that I could play with any level of skill. I wasn’t very tall or very fast, but I knew the game and how to play it. The only problem was that I peeked just a little early, at the age of 12, in fact. I was an All-Star and was one of only three kids from the league to move up to the 13-15 year old team the next year. Little did I know that I would be able to count the number of hits I had left in my bat on two hands.

I was so sure that I would make it to the majors, it bothered me that because my birthday was in January, I would not be able to celebrate it during the season. When we are young, it is easy to dream. Despite my failure to become a major league baseball player, I persevered. I would listen to every game and read the Sporting News from cover to cover. I remember sitting in the living room on Thursday waiting for the mailman to come so I could run out to the mailbox and get the paper. It was just about baseball back then and the best source for baseball information.

As I grew older, I continued my love affair with the game, but only from the stands. I would eventually play a little slow pitch softball, but I didn’t get into the beer drinking that accompanied it, so it was back to the radio and Marty and Joe. It wasn’t until the boys were born, that I rekindled the love of being on the field. When Justin turned eight, I finally talked him into giving the game a shot.

It was love at first sight for Justin as he made a spectacular play in his first game to catch a ball that had bounced off of the shortstops chest and glove and made a bullet throw to first base to complete a double play. How he knew to do that, I have no idea because it wasn’t something that you practice.

That first game started a streak that is still going in which Julia and I watched the boys play baseball. I am sure that we have watched close to 1,000 games by now, but I still look forward to each game like it was the first.

Baseball is a game that I have always loved and will continue to love until my last days. Yet, it was just the other day that something I had never anticipated happened. Doug Hare, the father of Matt Hare, my fellow sufferer of Multiple Myeloma, contacted me and wanted to know if I would mind if the put my name on a poster to be shown at a baseball tournament that will be played in Columbus on May 5-7.

The tournament is called the Coaches Against Multiple Myeloma and you can find out more at http://www.baseballcoachesagainstmm.webs.com/

Over 125 teams have already signed up with proceeds going to Multiple Myeloma research at Ohio State University Hospital. It is a wonderful cause that you can help by sending a donation to:

Doug Hare - Central Ohio Youth Baseball League

PO Box 1425 - Pataskala, Ohio 43062

Make your checks payable to MMORE and it will be tax deductable.

I may not be able to play anymore but my love for the game hasn’t changed and my feeling about this cause has only strengthened. If you can, please help.

I received great news today with a sneak peak at my blood work-up. I have been feeling great and anticipated good news, but with cancer, you never know. When I got the fax, I was relieved to find that my cancer count is now at an all time low of 5.76 (normal being 0.57-2.63). That is down over half of a point from two months ago. In addition, my creatinine is down to 2.0 (normal 0.8-1.3) which would lead you to believe that my kidneys are better. Again, the best that I have had since all of this started. Keep the prayers coming, God is listening!

April 19, 2010 Family

It was a few weeks ago that I happen to be wasting some time on the internet and I stumbled upon a site that had deaths listed. I have for years tried to get a better understanding of my last name. My father had mentioned a number of times that it was shorted when my grandparents came to America from Chuhran to Churan. So I thought I would give that a shot on this site and as I have in other attempts found nothing. But while I was there, I started looking around at other family names and found that my Aunt Edna had died last year at the age of 88 while I was in the hospital.

Aunt Edna was not “officially” my aunt as she was married to my dad’s step brother, but I always considered her as an aunt, often visiting her in Florida when we would vacation there. Aunt Edna was a tiny little thing maxing out at somewhere under 5 feet tall. She was my last grasp on my parent’s generation. All of my aunts and uncles have now passed away. I feel like I have lost a part of my past.

The first thing that struck me when I saw that she had died was that it took me so long to find out. There are a few things that I am good at, but keeping in touch with friends and relatives is not one of them. I’ve tried to stay in touch with my friends in Columbus, but haven’t done a very good job. I have been even worse with my own relatives. If it wasn’t for Julia sending out seasonal cards, they probably would not have even known that we moved to Arizona. They probably should have disowned me from the family by now.

Because we were going back to Columbus this past weekend for family pictures with Julia’s family (I’ll have another blog entry on that topic), Julia asked me if there was anyone that I wanted to see while I was back in town, as we had a few non scheduled hours available. I wasn’t sure at first because there were so many people that I would have liked to have seen, I didn’t know where to draw the line. Then it hit me that this might be a good chance to see my relatives in Dayton.

Then I had to decide which side would I see. Lord knows you don’t mix sides of families except at weddings and funerals. To break precedent, I thought I would get crazy and invite both the Churan’s (although none of them actually have that last name) and the Pregon’s (and most of them don’t have that last name either.) To kill two birds with one stone, we would meet at my favorite pizza place, Marion’s.

On a side note, we ate very traditionally in our home when I was growing up, never having Chinese, German or Italian food, including pizza. It wasn’t until I was a freshman in high school that I ate pizza for the first time. I was given the task to order a dozen pizzas for my homeroom end of the year celebration. I was told to call Marion’s for the pizzas. I knew how to dial the phone, but I had no idea even what went on a pizza. Luckily the folks at Marion’s helped me out and I have had a soft spot in my heart for that place for the last 43 years.

Julia sent Easter cards to my cousins in Dayton and mentioned that we would be at Marion’s at 6 PM on April 16 if anyone wanted to stop by and say “hi.” It had been years since I had actually seen of my relatives, so I really didn’t know what to expect. Julia estimated that we might have as many as 20 people, so Marion’s set aside an area for us and reserved some tables.

We got there a little before 6 and my cousin Maggie and her husband Roger were there so we knew, at least, we would not be eating alone. Then more and more people started flowing in. I didn’t count, but we had to have over 60 people there. It was wonderful getting to see everyone again. Not only did my cousins show up, but so did their kids and they brought their kids. It was like a funeral without all of the sadness.

Sometimes we take our friends and relatives for granted as in many ways it is a part of our past. When you move away, it is easy to just worry about the here and now. Hopefully, our getting together will rekindle some relationships, not only for me but for everyone there. Friends come and go, but your relatives are there forever, no matter how much time and many miles keep you apart.

It was a great way to start off a pretty important week for me. This Thursday, I will have possibly my last blood draw at the Mayo Clinic. Because of insurance constraints, my coverage at the Mayo ends on June 4. I am hoping and praying that some type of miracle has happened and my cancer has continued to recede. Despite the fact that I have been given this burden, it has been a great year with the people at the Mayo and I will miss them. Hopefully, we can part with smiles on our faces.

April 2, 2010 Hurts So Good

My, what a difference a year makes. One year ago, I still was in the middle of my chemo and radiation treatments. I was still two months away from my transplant and my life was still up for grabs. All I could do was hope that the poisons that they were putting in my body would help me get another year out of my life.

Now I sit here feeling like a million dollars. (That is aside from the first cold I have had since I found out I have cancer. Another use for chemo, a cold eradicator.) In fact, I have been feeling so good that the last two weekends I ventured out into the yard and started replacing all of the plants that had died in the last year.

Doesn’t sound like much, but it is only now that I realize how much the transplant took out of me. I marvel how easy it is to deal with the steps at a movie theater. After the transplant when I actually ventured out to a theater at an off hour to stay away from people, I had to hang on to the handrail like an 85 year old man. I would take one step at a time for fear of falling. Now it is like a walk in the park.

Julia has done a great job with the yard while I have been laid up, but she has never been a planter. She has become very good at pruning and manicuring the plants, but I have always been the shovel man in the family. And now it was time to not only replace but also rearrange.

Last year, after a great deal of fighting with our lovely Home Owners Association, we agreed on a design for the yard. Not sure why they call it a home owners association, it is more like a hateful hall monitor, but that is another story. We had a friend of our pool guy put in the landscaping and we relied heavily on his knowledge of plants that will thrive here.

Needless to say, we have learned a bit and decided to make some changes. So between Julia, Justin and myself, we either moved or replaced at least 30 plants over the two weekends. By Sunday on both weekends, I was completely whipped. I would never have thought that five hours of real work could do me in.

By Monday morning, my body was in a severe state of rejection. I didn’t realize that I had that many muscles as each one of them was screaming at me for my actions of the previous two days. But in the end it was a good pain. It felt good to hurt from something other than medical procedures. I finally felt like I was back.

March 14, 2010 Do You Believe in Miracles?

As an individual, we rarely get an opportunity to see a miracle take place. By its very definition, miracles don’t happen every day. From dictionary.com “mir·a·cle -- an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.” Yet, despite this seemingly impossible happenstance, miracles do happen.

Most people would not consider the fact that I am still here a miracle. I beg to differ. Several things had to fall into place for me to be living the normal life that I am. If I had just put off my physical, I might have died of a heart attack or at a very minimum lost the use of my kidneys. Without the intervention of chemotherapy, who knows how badly damaged my bones would have been.

The real miracle would be the transplant itself. If you think about the process, you cannot help but be amazed. Within a two week period, I was given injections to stimulate the growth of stem cells. They were then extracted from my body and frozen. I was then given a massive amount of chemotherapy that virtually destroyed my immune system, my red and white blood cells and my platelets. My stem cells were then given back and nine months later, I am as good as new (give or take a few wrinkles and sags.)

The original chemo helped, but it was obvious it was not the answer. Just 6 weeks off of it and I was almost back to the same level of cancer I had when it all began. Somehow, the transplant not only reduced the cancer but weakened it to the point where my body can now fight it without any medication. To me this is a miracle.

However, this weekend, I witnessed an even more special miracle. Julia’s brother John, his wife Angie and their two children, Ryan (4 ½) and Elena (2 ½) visited us. It had been almost a year since I had seen them and in that time the world had changed for little Elena. When she was born, Elena was deaf in one ear and soon to be deaf in the other. Hearing is a sense that we can often take for granted even to the point that some buy $400 headphones to completely wipe out sound. Hearing will never be taken for granted by Elena.

Soon after the discovery of Elena’s hearing loss, John and Angie began searching for alternatives to her future situation. After a good deal of study, the answer was clear. A bilateral cochlear implant was warranted. As described below by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, a cochlear implant does not cure hearing loss but offers an alternative.©1997-2010 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association


“A cochlear implant is a device that provides direct electrical stimulation to the auditory nerve. In sensorineural hearing loss where there is damage to the tiny hair cells in the cochlea, sound cannot reach the auditory nerve. With a cochlear implant, the damaged hair cells are bypassed and the auditory nerve is stimulated directly. The cochlear implant does not result in "restored" or "cured" hearing. It does, however, allow for the perception of sound ‘sensation.;’”

It was not an easy decision as there are potential complications from the surgery, but in John and Angie’s minds it was the one that had to be made. The real question was should only one or two implants take place. John and Angie felt that two would be more beneficial than one and began to battle with the insurance company to get both approved.

It was a battle that seemed to make little sense to those of us who understood the difference between this little girl living a world of silence and a world of near-normal sound, but the insurance company was only following the instruction of Angie’s employer. Not only did they not standardly approve implants for children under the age of one, they refused to cover a bilateral solution. Children of this age rarely get two implants but their doctor at Children’s Hospital in Columbus was seeing great success in getting the children “hearing” at younger ages to help establish improved speech. Elena would be a special case and with the cost of the procedure at $40,000 per ear it was going to catch everyone’s eye. They finally had to seek outside assistance from a State of Ohio fund in order to accomplish both implants. Elena became one of the youngest children to receive the double implant in Ohio.

The follow-up was not easy. Elena suffered from several infections in one of the implants and eventually it had to be removed. After time was given to heal, the implant was again implanted. This time, all was well.

When Julia visited Columbus in January she was amazed at the progress that Elena had made. With a significant amount of training and constant attention from her parents and caregiver, Elena was talking as well as any two year old. She could even carry a tune to songs like “Rock-a-Bye Baby” and “Jesus Loves Me.” When I saw Elena last week, I could not believe how easy she was to understand. Don’t get me wrong, she is like all two year olds. Sometimes you have to look to their parents for translation, but this was no more than I had experienced with other children in the past.

Elena is a bright little girl with eyes that will keep the boys hanging around the house when the time comes. She is as sweet as the day is long and gravitated to both Justin and Jason like they were her best friends. She was introduced to some friends of ours who later admitted that they had no idea that Elena was deaf.

There has been a good deal of controversy in the deaf community about this procedure. Some feel that it should be the individual that makes the decision to reject deafness and have the implants and not the parents of an infant. I can certainly understand their feelings but after seeing Elena and how happy she is, there is no doubt in my mind that John and Angie made the right decision.
We have entered a period in medicine that in the past was reserved for the Bible. Short of a miracle directly from the hand of God, I am certain that both Elena and I are examples of miracles facilitated by man with the help of God. One can only wonder about what the future will bring.

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.

January 30, 2010 Fran

When we made the decision to move from Ohio to Arizona there were a number of issues that were considered. Some were easy, some were not. The opportunity to take a new and challenging job was at the forefront of the easy ones. I was miserable in my old job and I was starting to bring it home. Even the boys noticed a change in me. At the time, I thought that if I stayed, it might kill me in the end. Little did I know that cancer might have already been in me when I left.

On the other side of the argument to leave was what we would be leaving behind. Justin would be giving up his senior year in high school. This is the part that I will second guess for the rest of my life. We moved to Powell with the intension of staying there until the boys graduated from high school. Because of my need for change, I asked a lot of Justin. I hope he understands how much I appreciate what he did.

For Jason the move was easy. Yes, he was moving away from all of his friends, but he looked at it as an adventure. He couldn’t wait to get out to Arizona. It meant great weather and more baseball. He came out earlier than Julia and Justin just so he could be networked by the time summer came.

As tough as the move was for Justin, it was even tougher for Julia despite the fact she has never said a word. Julia has always been very close to her family and I know the move was hard on her. I guess that is what love and marriage is all about.

The reason that I am bringing this up is that Julia has gone back to Ohio to spend some time with her family and in particular with her mother, Fran. Fran and I have shared the burden of cancer for almost the exact same time period as she found out just days after I did. We have always been close, but I think this has drawn us even closer.

Fran and I have always referred to ourselves as the “outlaws.” It seemed like it was us verses the rest of the family, not in a bad way, but in the way that we were put together. The Millers are a great group, but they all seem to have the same tendencies. Julia, her dad, her brother and grandparents share a number of the same qualities.

They are all very methodical about how they run their lives. They study everything before they make a decision. Fran and I tend to move without thinking sometimes. The rest of the Millers tend to take their time and enjoy smelling the roses. Fran and I take a quick look and then move on to the next flower. We are more worried about getting there on time than what happens when we get there.

I’ll never forget the first time that I visited Rockford. Julia and I had only been dating for a short time, but she felt it was time to show me off. There was inherent danger in this because I did not fit the Miller mold. I was divorced, old, Catholic and worst of all, Republican. Yet despite all of this, Fran made the house look like the President was coming.

That was just the start of it. I would come back from every visit weighing five pounds more than when I got there. The food was always great and there was plenty of it. I have always kidded Fran about being my favorite Mother-in-law, but the cooking clinched that title long before Julia and I were married. My ex-Mother-in-law wasn’t a bad cook, but I would always have to eat rhubarb pie every time I visited. Ugh.

Christmas always took Fran and I to a new level of togetherness. The only real present that I cared about was the one Fran would give me and the present that I took the most time getting was the one I gave her.

It all started pretty innocently when I was presented a huge lump of coal. Not to be outdone, I spent the next 364 days plotting how to get her back. I had some good ones over the years including a book on Monica Lewinsky(Bill Clinton was always her favorite.) Despite all of that, she always seemed to outdo me. My favorite was the used toupee. She always enjoyed the hair thing as I also received a few chia pets over the years.

Fran and I have always had each other’s back when it came to disagreements within the family. It was the Millers against the outlaws. We now have taken on cancer together. We talk more than ever before and prop each other up when we need it the most. We have even used the same chemotherapy. We have made a pact that we are not going to give up on living. I’m just glad I have a fellow “outlaw” to keep me going when the time get rough.

Make sure you keep Fran in your thoughts and prayers as we both try to do the impossible.

January 23, 2010 The Beast

It was sometime in the early 1960’s when my dad took Paul Decker and me to Coney Island in Cincinnati. It was the first time that I had ever been to an amusement park and it was still the day of buying tickets for each ride. It was that day that I rode my first roller coaster. It was love at first scream.

Coney had been around since the 1880’s and was on it’s last legs. In 1972, the company that owned Coney moved the rides away from the banks of the Ohio River to a community north east of Cincinnati called Mason. In the blink of an eye, the amusement park went from being old and crumbling to new and exciting. At one point, the company held 1,600 acres of land. Kings Island was now an adventure with many new rides on the way.

In 1979, the Beast was added. It was long, fast and scary. Roller coasters were still made out of wood at the time and 30 years later it is still the best way to make a coaster. When you get off of the Breast, your body hurts, but it is a good hurt. Since that time, I have ridden nearly 100 different coasters and the Beast is still my favorite.

The reason that I even bring this up is that I was reminded by my latest trip to the doctor that our lives can easily be compared to a roller coaster. It doesn’t matter what we do with our lives, it will be a series of ups and downs. The thing you have to learn is to not get caught up too much in either of those swings.

I’ll never forget the excitement of getting married in 1975, but I’ll also never forget the fact that my wife (ex-wife, not current) didn’t bother to come home the night of our second anniversary. The thrill of holding Jason for the first time was one of the highlights of my life, but having to rush him to Children’s Hospital 13 months later with a 105 degree temperature reminded me just how precious life is.

Shortly before I graduated from college, I was still looking for a job. I was lucky enough to get an interview with Timken, a roller bearing company located in Columbus. Getting a job was extremely hard in 1975 and just getting the interview was exciting. That same day, my mother had a good section of her lung removed in hopes of stopping her cancer. A cancer that took her life four months later.

I was offered a job that day which changed my life forever. If I hadn’t been hired by Timken, I might have ended up managing a McDonalds. When I received the official offer letter, I about fell over. It was 30% more than I had anticipated. Indeed my life had changed, I was overjoyed. What I didn’t know was that the three years that I worked in that filthy, fume infested plant might eventually be the cause of my multiple myeloma.

No one knows unequivocally what causes multiple myeloma, but the belief is that environment has a great deal to do with its beginning and it may be 20 to 30 years before it manifests. Due to the fact that I never really had any exposure to any other harmful agents leads me to believe that my cancer might have been started 35 years ago just out of college.

It was a year ago today that my latest adventure started. It has been a year of ups and downs. A year of self discovery. That learning has not stopped as I found out two days ago when I visited Dr. Mikhael for my latest check-up.

If you remember, I was only going to have my blood tested every other month to see how the cancer was progressing. I was to go in November and then again in January. My cancer number increased in November but that was not totally unexpected as the results likely will have peaks and valleys since I did not have a full remission.

Because my creatinine number was up significantly in November, I was scheduled for another blood test in December. The kidneys had corrected themselves and creatinine was back down, but the cancer number was again up and up much faster than expected. I was nearly to the point of needing more chemotherapy. Dr. Mikhael even mentioned getting another bone marrow biopsy (not exactly high on my list of things to do.)

I was crestfallen. The fact that my cancer was advancing quickly was devastating to me. The transplant had failed. The up that I had felt just three months before was gone, replaced with a terrible feeling of doom. I had forgotten that life is filled with ups and downs and I shouldn’t get too attached to either.

After two weeks off from work, I insisted on another test and received some encouraging results as the cancer number had fallen slightly. Even though it was a small change, it was a positive one. Any good news when you have cancer is great news. The next test scheduled for January 18th was going to be huge. Good results and I breathe easy for a while. Bad results and it is chemo time.

When Dr. Mikhael told me that my number had dropped down to the low 7’s from the 9’s the weight of the world was lifted off of my shoulders. My body was again beating the disease. I was winning. Another time for joy. Oddly, if my kidneys had not acted up in November, I would not have had the December test and would not have worried needlessly. Funny how the ups and downs of a roller coaster can jerk you around.

What I have taken from all of this is to become less worried about the numbers each month and worry about just living. Too often we all get tied to the latest event in our life and not looking toward the future. We are too worried about the work associated with moving up the roller coaster and not thinking enough about the thrill of the dive. Enjoy your roller coaster life. Don’t spend too much time dwelling with the pitfalls and enjoy the thrill of the ride.

January 18, 2010 Avatar

One of the things that I have experienced over the last year is an increased ability to cry. Obviously, this isn’t something that I going to brag about the next time I go out with the boys, but it is certainly real. As I have gotten older, I have become more emotional, but I have now reached new heights in tear flow.

Now, don’t misunderstand, I’m not sitting alone on the couch in total darkness sobbing to myself. It actually isn’t even directly related to the fact that I have cancer. It is all about TV and movies. I can’t go to a movie anymore and not find something to get teary-eyed about.

I notice that “Up” won a Golden Globe award on Sunday as the best animated movie of the year. I could have saved them all the time of counting the votes. I could have used my “tear index” to tell them the winner. I’m watching an animated movie about an old man, a kid and some animals and I am breaking down in the theater. I am now crying because a cartoon character died in the lead character’s past. Yes, a cartoon character.

This leads me to a discussion about “Avatar.” If you are not a moviegoer or have lived in a cave for the last six months, Avatar is the latest from James Cameron that has already grossed over one billion dollars worldwide. I had been eagerly awaiting it’s arrival at the box office, but through a series of circumstances took almost a month before actually viewing the blockbuster.

It became a joke in our household as I insisted on viewing the film on an IMAX screen in 3D. Just a regular viewing was not going to be enough for me. I told Julia that it was going to be a “once in a lifetime experience.” I was mocked for over a week after making that claim, but nothing was going to stop me from enjoying the movie to the max.

I have been a science fiction fan since my early teenage years. I remember watching “ 2001: A Space Odyssey” and just being mesmerized. I have followed in my father’s footsteps and had been reading scifi books for several years when “2001” hit the movie screen. My dad only read the sports page in the Dayton Daily News and science fiction books. I still have hundreds of those books stored in my basement.

As a result, it was in my blood. The fact that “Avatar” was a science fiction that was being directed by Cameron, had me at the edge of my seat for months waiting for it to arrive. You think kids look forward to Christmas, you should see me waiting for a James Cameron science fiction movie.

The day finally hit and I insisted on getting to the theater nearly an hour in advance. The last thing I wanted was to be in row 1 looking up at a six story screen. Again my actions were ridiculed, but I pushed forward. Finally, the movie started and 60 seconds into it I had a panic attack. Because of the 3-D and the movement of the camera I immediately started getting sick. My world was coming to an end.

You see, about 10 years ago, something happened to me that caused me to get a headache and upset stomach when I watch home videos that I have made of the boys if there is any significant movement on the video. No problem making the video, just watching. I was now panicking that my once in a lifetime experience would turn into a pool of vomit at my feet.

Luckily the action settled down and the once in a lifetime experience turned into even more. For the next two hours and forty minutes I became a part of the movie. The move is so vivid, so amazing that you cannot help but be drawn in. It makes you become alien and root against the humans. I’m not going to spoil the movie by telling you any more, but take it from me and even my skeptic, non-science fiction loving wife, the movie is unbelievable.

For much of the 160 minutes, I sat there, an emotional mess, crying one minute and rejoicing the next. I cannot even describe what I felt, it was so profound. I know that sounds utterly ridiculous, but I was so drawn into the action that I felt like I was part of it and it was my family, my race, my religion I was viewing.

After we exited the movie, I was amazed at how I felt. I now know what heaven will look like, save the wild man eating beasts of the planet, Pandora. The cinematography was so unbelievable that it had to be heaven. The wonders of the planet were so lifelike that you could imagine what they smelled and felt like. I have never seen anything like it in over 50 years of movie going.

I realize that I am a geek and most of the rest of you are not, but I cannot suggest any more strongly to see this movie. It is as much a love story as an action movie. Just go to be part a “once in a lifetime experience.” You will not be disappointed.

January 16, 2010 Getting Old

It is amazing what happens to us as we age. Our body decides to operate differently than it did before. Often the change is so slight that we don’t even notice. It reminds me of the first time that I put on a pair of glasses.

My vision was getting worse and worse when I was 11 but I was the last to know. I was able to play baseball but the number of times I struck out was alarming. However, being 11, I just thought I stunk. Yet, the incident that drove it home was during the spring after I turned 12, I was playing in the garage because it was raining outside.

Being an only child, I had to find ways of keeping myself busy and often played games I created that had something to do with a sport. When it was nice outside I would throw a Superball (now called bouncy balls) against the side of the house by the driveway and play a modified game of baseball dictated by how quickly I would field the ball, throw it back against the wall and field it with my foot on an imaginary bag. If I would do it under the count of 10, the guy was out. If it got by me, every count of ten was another base. Twenty for a double, thirty for a triple and so on. We had weeds on the other side of the driveway, so if it got by me, who knows how high I could count.

Since it was raining, I had to make modifications and do it inside. Only problem was that I used a golf ball and the wall that I threw it against was a finished, plastered painted wall. When my dad got home, the sound I heard would have rivaled the atomic blast at Hiroshima. Apparently, every time I threw the ball against the wall it made a dent. Because of my poor vision, I did not notice the hundreds of dents in the wall. The wall now looked more like a golf ball than a wall. This was the first proof that I was slowly losing my ability to see.

After my dad cooled down, it was decided that I needed to see an eye doctor. It seems my right eye wasn’t too bad, but my left I was terrible. After I got my glasses, I remember looking out of my bedroom window and actually seeing individual blades of grass. I was amazed. Little did I know that what was happening to my eyes would eventually happen to the rest of my body. Only problem is that there is no quick fix like glasses.

A day doesn’t go by that I don’t have some new ache or pain. When I run up the stairs, I look around for an oxygen tank. When I try to wrestle with one of my kids, I feel like the 98 pound weaklink that has sand kicked in his face. What really struck me, though, was when Matt Hare updated his blog and discussed how many stem cells they were able to gather for his transplant. I was as proud as a new papa when I found out that I had gathered over four million the first day. The total goal was nine, so I felt good about having only two days hooked up to the machine. Most take three or four days, so I felt like I had kicked some serious butt.

Matt had mentioned in his blog that he hoped to get his nine million in one day. I sent him a note trying to ease him down so that he would not be disappointed when he didn’t reach his goal. How in the world could he get nine in one day when I only had four? Poor misguided kid.

Then I read his blog. Fifteen million. Yes, he collected fifteen million in one sitting. Heck, he could have taken a break and had a White Castle or two and gotten his nine million. My God, youth is a wonderful thing.

This brings me to the reason that I am talking about age. It seems that I was born on this day, 57 years ago. I have often wondered why we celebrate our own birthdays. Shouldn’t this be a day that the mother is celebrated? She is the one that went through all of the work. Back in the 1900’s when I was born, there was no epidural for the mom. It was head on pain and my mother went through 18 hours of it.

I’m afraid that I lost her 35 years ago, but I still appreciate what she did for me and what she put up with for the 22 years we had together. Thanks, Mother. (She never let me call her Mom. It made her feel old. Her mother was referred to as “Mom”, even by her grandchildren.)

Make sure you thank your mom on your next birthday. Just remember, she is the reason that you will get some birthday cake on your day.

Since this is supposed to be a blog about my health, I suppose I should stop pontificating and get to that part of my life. If you remember, I had another blood test after my two weeks of vacation. Apparently, I deserve my Dr. Kildare lab coat as my theory is at least partially right in that my cancer count dropped slightly (9.45 to 9.01). Certainly not statistically significant (just trying to use words I learned in college), but at least movement in the right direction. I take both a blood test and a 24 urine test on January 18. This will be very important as it will help decide if I need to go on some type of maintenance drug or chemotherapy. I’ll have results on January 21. See you then.

January 6, 2010 Friends

There is an old adage that talks about throwing spaghetti against the wall to see if it sticks. If it does stick, you know it’s completely cooked. That phrase later became part of the business vernacular as spaghetti became ideas and the purpose was to come up with as many ideas as possible and see which ones worked.

I never really thought about it until the other day, but that is the way we are with friends. You meet thousands of people over a lifetime but few stick around as friends. In the last week, I have met at least 10 new people. I doubt that any will become lifelong friends. You never know, but the likelihood is slim.

Sometimes it just takes a while for the friendship to blossom. You may meet someone, have fairly minimal contact and then go your separate ways only to get reconnected in the future. Over the last six months I have had one of those reconnections change my life.

With all of the teams the boys have played on over the years, they each have had fifty or more coaches. Because of the amount of time you spend with those teams, there is a decent likelihood that a friendship will occur. One of my best friends in the world is Chuck Gould, who coached Jason and Justin for three years . Another of those friends is Chris Valentine, who oddly enough, became a friend as a rival coach before he actually coached Jason.

A couple of summers ago, Chris put together a team of top players from the Columbus area to play in some post season tournaments. The boys did pretty well and we all had a lot of fun travelling around the state. One of Chris’ long time friends, Matt Hare, helped coach the team. I really didn’t get to talk to Matt much, but he seemed like a good kid.

Oddly, the thing that made Matt stand out to us as a family was something Julia’s grandmother, Marge, said while we were at one of the tournaments. To fully understand why this particular comment stood out, you have to understand Julia’s grandmother.

Marge is now 93 years old and has been married to Lester Miller for 70+ years. She is as nice as they come, but she is generally a very quiet and conservative person. It was just before the start of one of the tournament games that she attended, Matt happened to walk by and Marge commented on how nice his legs looked in the shorts he was wearing.

To most, this might not mean much, but knowing Marge as we do, the entire family just about fell out of their chairs with just the thought that Marge would even be looking at a 22 year old’s legs, let alone commenting on how nice they looked. Because of that comment, Matt would never be forgotten in the Churan household.

After the tournaments ended we all went our separate ways and other than retelling the story, Matt drifted from our lives. That was until Chris noted on his Facebook account that Matt was ill this past summer.

Matt was tired and losing a good deal of weight and the doctors could not discover what was wrong with him. However, as Chris described some of the symptoms to us, it started to sound eerily familiar. After weeks in the hospital, it was confirmed, Matt had Multiple Myeloma.

This seemed impossible. Matt was 25 years old. It was unlikely that I, a 56 year old, would even get the disease. This is a disease of old people, certainly not 20-somethings. To add to his problems, Matt also had an accompanying disease, amyloidosis, also a disease that does not normally attack young people. Multiple Myeloma causes plasma cells to malfunction and they lose the ability to respond to controlling signals from immune cells. As a result, abnormal proteins are created that damage bone, bone marrow and other organs. Amyloidosis is a disease in which an abnormal protein (amyloid) builds up in organs and tissues, impairing their function. Both of these disease are treatable, but not curable.

Needless to say, Matt was dealt a hand that just should not have happened. He was too young and too healthy. As one might expect, this was a crushing blow to a young man with his entire life still ahead of him. He was in the hospital for seven weeks as they struggled to discover the cause and begin treatment. An infection from his port caused a trip to the ICU and a great deal of concern for friends and family.

Like myself, Matt has had his battle with doubts about recovery, but through it all, he has remained upbeat with the knowledge that God is on his side. He has shown remarkable progress and has wonderful results from his treatment with Velcade. His Multiple Myeloma is in remission even before his stem cell transplant. The strength that he has shown through this whole thing is amazing. I want to be Matt when I grow up.

The amyloidosis has not shown as good of a response but there is good news as his organs do not show significant damage. I know I have left out a million details so when you have a chance, visit Matt at his blog, please take a read. You will be amazed at the strength of this young man.

http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/matthewhare/journal

Matt will go into the hospital on January 18 and receive his massive chemotherapy that starts the transplant sequence that same day. He will follow a schedule much like mine and start to feel the effects a few days later. Hopefully, his youth will speed his recovery. Please keep him in your prayers.

Until both of us ended up on the wrong end of an IV, Matt and I lived our somewhat care free lives independent of one another. Because of Multiple Myeloma, we have struck up a friendship that will last for the rest of our lives (hopefully, long lives.) There are many things that draw people together as friends. Sometimes those things are good, sometimes they are bad. For whatever reason, God decided that we needed each other years before the actual discovery of cancer. My, He does work in strange ways.

January 4, 2010 A Week in the Basement

In the movie, “Up in the Air”, George Clooney’s character, Ryan Bingham instructs attendees at a seminar that they must rid themselves of their attachments in life. In it he states, “How much does your life weigh? Imagine for a second that you're carrying a backpack. I want you to pack it with all the stuff that you have in your life... you start with the little things. The shelves, the drawers, the knickknacks, then you start adding larger stuff. Clothes, tabletop appliances, lamps, your TV... the backpack should be getting pretty heavy now….The slower we move the faster we die.”

In it, he also states that we shouldn’t keep photographs as they are for people with bad memories. To Bingham, you need to live your life without attachments, without things. He lives a solitary life that in the end, he finds disturbing. I cannot say I live that life. In fact, this last week really drove that home.

When we returned home from the cruise, I took it upon myself to attack the one major storage area in our house, one of our spare bedrooms. Unlike the Midwest, where everyone has a basement that houses all of the junk they have accumulated in their life, Arizona does not afford you that option. Every house that we have purchased afforded us a bigger basement and as a result more stuff. Although much was jettisoned during the move, much remains. That one bedroom had gotten so cluttered that we could barely open the door.

As a result, I decided to take the next several days to try to sort some things out. With some help from the rest of the family, that spare bedroom now can be entered without taking your life into your own hands. Yet, through that process, I went through 60 boxes of stuff. Some were easy and thus fast to replace. Others were not. They tended to be the ones with the most memories. The memories that Bingham looks at rather lightly.

I found everything under the sun. I found the little white hat with the small brim that I must have worn when I was two. It had “Johnnie” embroidered on the front and enough aging stains to make it look more brown than white. I found an old rattle from my childhood and pictures of my parents and grandparents from their wedding days. I found things that only hold special memories for me that when I’m gone will mean nothing to those left behind.

When the boys actually became involved, they went through their lifelong ritual of either playing with toys from their youth or trying on clothes ten years too small. They found things that they had either thought long lost or completely forgotten about. It was an opportunity to relive some of their youth. Yea, I know they are still young, but for some reason we all want to believe we are kids again.

After all of this reminiscing, Justin suggested that we watch old videos. Those that know me well, know that I have been a nut about taping the boys from day one. I probably have five hours of Justin eating baby food although that probably isn’t hard to believe if you look at him today. Julia gets to get in a shot every once in a while but that is usually to clean up a mess that the boys have created. If it wasn’t for my comments while doing the taping, you might not know that I even existed. Putting it simply, this taping is about the boys, an opportunity for them to relive their youth later in life.

What I have found, however, is that they like to watch them now, even while they are still young. It seems like we all want to go back and enjoy the good times of our lives no matter how young, old, rich or poor. Our lives are filled with a mish mosh of good and bad, joy and pain. We are drawn to the good times and want to relive them as we slosh through the times that may not be so joyful. Unlike Bingham, I’m glad I have brought along the weight of my past. It has made me what I am today.

We ended up watching about three hours of home videos last night including four of Jason’s birthdays, only one of which found him crying because he didn’t like the cake. I know that particular bit of information seems odd, but for some reason Jason found several cakes lacking over the years. Even though we have watched these videos numerous times, we laughed till we cried more than a few times

As an update to my ongoing battle, I had blood drawn at the Mayo this morning as I have once again put on my Dr. Kildare lab coat. In looking at my results over the past several months, it is obvious that the cancer began its comeback when I returned to work full time. After having two weeks off from work, I thought it might be a good idea to see how the cancer behaved while I just relaxed. Not sure what I am going to do if there is an improvement, but stay tuned.