Ever wonder what you've done to piss God off so much?  My wife was diagnosed with multiple myeloma over a year ago.  She spent all last summer at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance undergoing chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant.  She's been sick from the chemo since she got home just after Labor Day.  Finally this past week and a half she's started feeling better.  She's started working on her EBay stuff again, taking herself to doctors' appointments and doing errands.  She's even started being able to fix dinner and do a little light housework. 

Today, she decided to drive to the post office to mail a package, but discovered that she had forgotten to bring her purse.  She turned the car around and headed home to get it.  The sun was in her eyes and she didn't see that a traffic light had turned red and that the van in front of her had stopped.  Yup, she rear-ended the van.  No doubt that it was her fault.  So, the car had to be towed to a body shop and she got a ticket.  Fortunately nobody was hurt -- and that's a miracle because the myeloma caused her bones to become very brittle and she had three back surgeries before the cancer diagnosis.  We're counting our blessings about nobody being hurt.

My wife's cancer caused her to lose a very good job and we had to go through bankruptcy.  Now the deductible will be at least $500 on her car and hard to say how much the citation will cost, plus our insurance will undoubtedly go up.

My job doesn't pay all that much and half my paycheck every month goes to pay for medical insurance for my wife.  When does it end?  I probably deserve all the bad fortune I get, but my wife has always been a good, God-fearing Christian.  She doesn't deserve any of this.

OK, I got that off my chest.

 

---

Okay, I’m ready to start my campaign for the vice presidency.  I don’t want to be president, just the veep.  I figure it would be a pretty good job, to be vice president of the United States.  Pretty good pay and excellent health care benefits.  You get your very own jet to fly around in.  Chauffeured limo, secret service agents to keep people from kicking sand in my face, very little responsibility or real work to do and as I understand it, a hunting license to shoot people and claim it was a hunting “accident.”  Yessireebob, I’m throwing my hat in the ring right now before anybody actually gets nominated to run for the presidency.  I figure if I get enough of a head start on this and get a lot of support from you, I should be the logical choice of whomever gets nominated to run for president.  It doesn’t really matter which party I’m the running mate on – they’re all a bunch of lying, conniving snakes in the grass anyway.

 

So, what platform am I running on you may ask.  I plan to take the office back to its glory days and be the do nothing vice president!  Nobody (especially the prez) wants his veep to do anything that might embarrass him/her, like make an intelligent decision.  I should be very good at that, since I’ve made very few smart decisions in my whole life.  I’ll even go so far as to promise not to try and spell “potato.”  I’ll just spell it “spud.”

 

Now, I realize most folks with political aspirations begin their careers on a smaller scale, like running for congress.  I don’t have time for that – I’m old.  And besides, congresspersons have something called “constituents” that they have to pay lip service to every couple of years.  I’d rather fly beneath the radar, as it were, and just be the seldom (or never) seen or heard from vice president.

 

So, you ask, what happens if the president croaks and you all of a sudden have to step into the job?  Well, I certainly wouldn’t want that to happen, but I suppose I could muddle through somehow.  We’ve had a number of presidents who’ve done just that, i.e. Millard Fillmore, Calvin Coolidge, “Ike”, Dubya, et al.  I reckon I couldn’t do a much worse job as The Prez than Dubya.

 

So, when you go to your local party caucuses, please remember to vote for me, Xradioguyfrank for vice president of these here United States.  Thank you.

First Day of a Brand New Year

 

I don’t know where 2007 went, but I can’t say I’m going to miss it.  In 2007, my wife Alma was diagnosed with multiple myeloma.  Because she could no longer work and she had run up a pile of credit card debt I didn’t know about, we had to declare bankruptcy.

 

Alma spent the whole summer in Seattle getting treatment for her cancer at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.  That meant renting an apartment at the Pete Gross House, a facility built for just this purpose – housing cancer patients.  I mostly stayed home here in the Tri-Cities and worked.  Half of my paycheck each payday goes to pay for health insurance for Alma since she also lost her insurance benefits when she lost her job.

 

The treatment for Alma’s multiple myeloma consisted of several rounds of chemo therapy, a stem cell transplant and so damned many pills I don’t know how she keeps them all straight.  The result?  Her cancer is in remission, but she feels terrible from all the medications.

 

Nope, 2007 will not go down as my favorite year.  At least I didn’t get a kidney stone.  But I did have to have bilateral hernia surgery (that’s both sides and three hernias).  Alma and I are both going into 2008 with colds.  Having a cold is very serious for Alma because her immune system is still compromised.

 

The old saying goes something like, “Just when you thought things couldn’t get worse, they did.”  I don’t pretend to know what 2008 will bring.  Could it get any worse?  Oh yeah!  Could it get better?  Sure – I’ve got both Alma and me entered in the Publisher’s Clearinghouse sweepstakes, so when we win that….

 

The year 2008 means it’s been 45 years since I graduated from high school and 40 years since I got drafted and decided to join the navy.  It is just not possible that it has been that many years!  I remember wishing the time would fly by when I was in the navy (especially in boot camp) so I could get “outta there,” but the days and weeks just seemed to drag on endlessly.  Now even a mundane eight hour work day seems to only take about an hour.  And, when I worked in radio, especially early in my career, a one-day weekend seemed adequate.  Now it seems like I haven’t really had a weekend off at all, even after a three-day holiday weekend.

 

I’m hoping 2008 will be kinder to Alma and me, but I sure wouldn’t take odds on it.  As the old expression goes, “Life’s a bitch, and then you die.”

I’ve mentioned here in the past that I work with a bunch of pretty nice people.  I’m just not used to that.  In my previous life in the wonderful world of commercial radio, I kind of got used to my employers and many of my fellow employees being ego-driven, self-centered, everybody for himself jerks – including me.

 

I currently work for a non-profit company called Senior Life Resources Northwest (http://www.seniorliferesources.org).  There are three agencies within the company including Meals on Wheels, Home Care Services and Senior Health Services.  I applied for work there two years ago as an administrative assistant because, physically, I can no longer do many of the kinds of work I’ve done in the past.  And I refuse to do outside, commission sales again.

 

I’ll digress for a moment.  When you’re just shy of 60 years old and suddenly find yourself laid off from the best paying job you’ve ever had, you find that all the laws in this country against age and sex discrimination are nothing but a bunch of words on paper.  You will be discriminated against, especially if you are white and male.  Reverse sex discrimination was sometimes out-and-out blatant.  The prospective employers knew there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

 

So, I saw an ad for this job I was eminently qualified for with Senior Life Resources Northwest.  I drove over to their office and spent about an hour filling out the employment application and releases for background checks.  A week or so later, I was called in for an interview and I must say, I felt I did pretty well.  God knows I’d had enough practice over the previous year!  But I heard nothing back – the usual result.  Finally, a couple of months later I guess, I got a letter from SLR thanking me for my interest, blah, blah, blah.  Then the very next day, my wife called me and said that SLR had called my former employer, where she still worked, and was getting references.  I said something like, “But I just got their rejection letter yesterday.”

 

But I got the job.  Come to find out, I was not their first or even second choice.  But the first and second choices, both young women, just hadn’t worked out.  So, in desperation, the office manager said, “Let’s call the old guy.”  And “the old guy” has been there for nearly two years now.  They hadn’t wanted to hire a man because the women in the office were afraid I’d just join the “good ol’ boy” network.  Well, hell -- there are only two other men in the office and they’re both in management.  I told my new fellow employees to just threat me like “one of the girls.”  They do, but to tell the truth, I think they’re more protective of me than they are of each other.

 

So, I took this week off to have some surgery done.  I sent the office a funny email the day after the surgery letting them know everything went well.  Thursday I got a call from one of the women in the office asking directions to my house because she and one of the other gals had something they wanted to bring me.  They both showed up at my door after they got off work with a card and box of chocolate.  No flowers because they knew my wife shouldn’t have flowers or plants in the house with her immune system being compromised from chemotherapy.  I am still flabbergasted that these two people (who had not wanted to work with me two years ago) would go way out of their way to bring me a card and box of chocolate candy.  My house is in the opposite direction from the office to their homes by a good many miles.  To paraphrase Sally Field, “They like me!  They really like me!”  And I like them too.

My wife, Alma, finally got home from Seattle shortly after Labor Day after over three months of treatment for multiple myeloma at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.  She is feeling a little better with each passing day but still tires very easily.  I’m not going to dwell on her illness and recovery with this entry.  I’ve pretty much covered all of that over the past year – from the uncertainty caused by not knowing what was causing her vertebrae to fracture and compress to the diagnosis of multiple myeloma, to the frustration with the insurance company and then the cancer treatment.  She’ll be going back to Seattle for a few days in November for follow-up and maintenance.

 

So, Alma’s home, her progress is good and she has survived a form of cancer treatment that many others have not (we just learned this from another myeloma survivor recently).  Life should be getting back to normal, right?  My boss told me I have 40 hours of vacation time coming that I have to use before the end of the year.  All right, vacation!  I’ve been planning this for months now.  I can virtually feel what I’m going to do on this vacation in my gut!  I chose the week carefully because I work in a small office and I wanted to keep any disruption to a minimum.  I got everybody’s blessing to take the week of October 22^nd off.  That done, I spent all one morning the previous week making my reservation.

 

Early on the morning of the 22^nd, my wife and I headed out for a destination that is all too familiar to us both for the beginning of my “vacation.”  We’re headed for the same day surgery unit of Kadlec Hospital in Richland, Washington.  I have bilateral hernias that can no longer be ignored.  I was referred to a surgeon by my doctor who smells of garlic, speaks with an accent I cannot quite identify and who has a name that is completely unpronounceable.  The surgeon is a nice young man who cannot be more than 16 years old.  He explains that he likes to do hernia repairs using laparoscopic surgery where he cuts three small holes in the abdomen and pulls the wayward intestine back where it’s supposed to be from above.  That sounds fine to me because I had misgivings about having a teenager wielding a sharp knife so close to my, ahem, family pride.  And since there are hernias on both sides, well, let’s just minimize the cutting “down there.”

 

Since I had pre-registered at the hospital the previous week, I checked in a little before 8:00.  Was wheeled into surgery a little after 9:00 and was back home in my own recliner a little after noon.

 

Those of you who have read my posts about my kidney stone a couple of years ago may well wonder when I’m going to learn that medical procedures involving my plumbing are going to be very painful no matter what kind of fancy name they make up for it.  I’m hoping that my next vacation is far, far away from any place that has “hospital” or “clinic” as part of its address.  But at our age, maybe that’s just what we can come to expect from now on.

It’s time for an update on my rant about health care insurance.  Since my post several weeks ago my wife has found a woman at the insurance company who really seems to care.  She has guided my wife through the maze and has gotten her approved for the testing required before she starts treatment.  We will be going to Seattle next week.  After testing, the results and recommendations of the doctors will be reviewed by the insurance company’s transplant committee.  Provided she’s approved, the treatment can begin.  She’ll have to stay in Seattle for at least three months and have a caregiver with her.  We have been blessed with friends and family who have volunteered to take the caregiver training and be with her throughout this ordeal.

 

One of my wife’s daughters, Jessica, will be her primary caregiver.  She has a family of her own, so she is sacrificing quite a bit.  Fortunately, my sister has volunteered for a week, one of my wife’s sisters is a teacher and has volunteered to be a caregiver for several weeks after school lets out.  And there will be others coming to relieve the primary caregivers for a day or two at a time.

 

Why aren’t I going to be her primary caregiver?  I have to stay home and go to work every day to pay for the insurance premiums (which take about one-half my paycheck every month).

 

So, things are proceeding at a pretty rapid pace now.  To those who have responded to my post here or privately, thank you for your thoughts, advice and prayers.  They are appreciated.

 

There were a couple of people who took exception to my stance on a national health care program.  I expected that.  I live in a very politically conservative part of the state.  Just a couple of days ago, I saw one of our local state representatives on TV speaking against a state supported health plan.  I wish I had counted the number of times he used the used the politically charged phrases “socialized care” and “socialized medicine”.  I’m sure the locals here agreed with everything he was saying. 

 

The people who replied to my post citing how inefficient national health care plans are in other countries had very valid points.  Whenever you let the government, especially the federal government, get involved in any kind of endeavor it’s going to get bogged down in red tape and bureaucracy.  The VA boondoggle is a perfect example.  But my contention is that it doesn’t have to be that way.  And it’s beginning to look like the states are going to get involved individually in health care.  Some already have.

 

One of the people who replied to my post stated that there is a line of Canadians waiting to get into the U.S. to get health care because their national health care system is so bogged down.  Maybe so, but I saw a news report last night where insurance carriers in this country have started approving Americans to go overseas for certain procedures because they can save thousands of dollars over what they’d have to pay out for the same care in this country.  In one state, Premera Bluecross will even pay for transportation overseas (coach class of course) as well as paying for the medical treatment and housing while abroad.  Patients are finding that instead of having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, they “only” have to pay tens of thousands. 

 

My detractors asked my why I didn’t plan better for such a contingency.  Why didn’t we use COBRA to continue my wife’s insurance after her place of employment finally terminated her?  We discussed it and debated it and finally took the advice of our bankruptcy attorney not to go with COBRA.  I was able to continue our insurance through my place of employment, but it was terribly expensive to add my wife.  And how do you plan for something like multiple myeloma?  We used to have some money in savings.  We have several small retirement IRAs, but we’ve already had to cash one of those in.

 

One of my favorite saying is, “Don’t whine, or God will make you live longer.”  So I’ll stop now.  I think I’ll go out and watch for the Publishers Clearinghouse van to pull up.

 

Thanks for all the prayers and kind words.  They are appreciated.

 

Frank

My wife, Alma, celebrates her 60^th birthday tomorrow.  I use the word “celebrates” loosely.  Last fall she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, an incurable cancer of the bone marrow.  She has been undergoing aggressive treatment since the diagnosis and the disease is now in remission. 

 

There is a treatment involving the extraction, freezing and re-implanting her own stem cells and massive chemotherapy available which could prolong her life for an unknown number of years.  The only problem is that it costs nearly a quarter of a million dollars.  We’re hoping the new insurance I have through my work place will cover it, but we’re just not sure that it will.  She lost her insurance through her former job when her grace period to return to work ran out.  She cannot go back to work, probably ever.  Fortunately, she does have disability insurance, and we’re trying to get her on Social Security disability so we can get her Medicaid or Medicare benefits.

 

Since she’s in remission, the doctors want her to go to Seattle ASAP for the transplant/chemo treatment.  When she called the new insurance company, she was told, rather coldly, that there is a one-year waiting period – no exceptions.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a matter of life or death; no exceptions.  And never mind that they might be breaking HIPPA laws, because there was no interruption of coverage between her former insurance coverage and the current coverage.  No exceptions! 

 

I know there are those of the conservative bent who vehemently oppose any kind of national health plan, or as they would call it, “socialized medicine.”  Most of the other developed countries in the west have national health coverage, but not the good ol’ USA.  It might raise taxes a little so we can’t afford the fancy new RV, boat or summer home we’ve just got to have.  We can spend billions and billions of dollars fighting an unwinnable war in Iraq, but we can’t afford a national health plan?

 

I served four years in the U. S. Navy during the Vietnam fiasco.  The current state of affairs in this country – the neoconservatism and the “screw you, I’ve got mine, to hell with you” attitude that so many people have adopted here make me wonder why I didn’t run off to Canada back then.  At least the Canadians have a national health plan.

The following is the letter I sent with all my Christmas cards.

We hope this Holiday Greeting finds you in good health and spirits.

 

The year 2006 began well for Alma and Frank.  The Seattle Seahawks made it to the Super Bowl.  Unfortunately, they lost.  Frank began work for a non-profit company called Senior Life Resources Northwest on January 9^th.  The job started out as part-time, then became “temporary full-time” (meaning no benefits) for a few months when his supervisor quit to go to work for Benton County.  After she discovered that the grass (and money) are not always greener on the other side of the fence, she returned to Senior Life Resources and Frank went back to part-time hours.  On November 1^st, SLR found enough work for Frank to do to make him a permanent full-time employee (with benefits this time). 

 

Frank’s promotion to full-time employee came after Alma began complaining of a sore back last summer.  It was found that she had a compressed fracture of one of her vertebrae and she was scheduled for a procedure called kyphoplasty where a balloon is inserted between the compressed vertebrae and the bone is filled with quick-drying cement.  This is an outpatient procedure, and we thought she would be back to work within a few days.  But, the pain in her back got worse; another compressed fracture and another kyphoplasty.  And then a couple of weeks later we had to call 911 to have her transported to the hospital because she couldn’t stand up.  A third kyphoplasty was performed.  Along with the sudden onset of osteoporosis which caused the fractures, it was found that she was acutely anemic and had virtually no iron in her blood.  This led some of the doctors to begin suspecting that Alma might have a form of blood cancer called multiple myeloma.

 

The day before Thanksgiving, Alma finally had a marrow biopsy done, and we got the bad news the following Monday.  She suffers from myeloma and it has affected not only her vertebrae, but also her left femur, scull and several other bones with lesions (small holes).  She has since begun an aggressive treatment involving infusions of Zometa (zoledronic acid) and other drugs and has already begun to feel a little better.  Many people, some of whom have never met her, are including Alma in their prayers, and we are very grateful for their support.  For more information on multiple myeloma, you can check out the web site http://www.myeloma.org/.

 

We have faith that the coming year will see Alma in remission and leading a normal and productive life again.

 

Alma’s daughters Tammie and Jessica have been a true blessing during Alma’s illness, taking her to doctors’ appointments, physical therapy, cleaning house, etc.  Her co-workers from InStar have pitched in by bringing dinners that can be quickly heated up when Frank gets home from work and coming to visit her at the hospital and at home.  Her sister Janice and brother-in-law Steve from Fruitland, Idaho have made several trips to the Tri-Cities to help out and lend moral support.  And, of course, Frank’s employers at Senior Life Resources found a way to help.  We are very blessed to have family, friends and employers such as we have.

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

 

Frank & Alma 

 

Wow!  What the hell happened to Bravenet's formatting here.  Well, let's try my latest entry.

My wife has now had three kyphoplasty procedures done over less than a two month period of time.  She was scheduled for a fourth because of another fractured vertebrae, but since it isn’t causing much pain, and hasn’t compressed like the other troublesome ones, she and the doctor have agreed to give it a rest – for now.

 

A biopsy was supposed to have been done during the third kyphoplasty while Alma was already under anesthesia, but there was no marrow in the vertebrae being treated.  So, a marrow biopsy is still yet another procedure she will have to undergo.  The reason for the biopsy is that the hematologist and the oncologist working on her case believe she has a form of myeloma; a form of blood cancer.  At one time they brought up the possibility of multiple myeloma, but now believe it’s a milder form called “smoldering myeloma.”

 

I recently had to take Alma to the emergency room because she was nauseated and had diarrhea and was emotionally upset because she faced more surgery and testing.  Thankfully, we got an ER doctor who took the time with us to assure Alma that she had just contracted “a little virus”.  He assured us that if a person must have a form of carcinoma (cancer), then myeloma was the kind to have as it’s highly treatable and people who have it live for years and decades without it seriously affecting their lives.  He got her hydrated and gave her some anti-nausea medication.

 

The ER doctor also prescribed some anti-nausea suppositories because pills tend to be upchucked when one is nauseated.  He didn’t take into account what happens to suppositories when one has diarrhea.  Now, because of her back problems, Alma wasn’t even capable of twisting around enough to wipe her own butt, much less insert suppositories.  Guess who had to stay home from work and do it (over and over)?  Also guess who had to give his first enema?  I guess I should be getting used to this.  I worked as a ward attendant on a geriatrics ward at a state mental hospital one summer while in college.  I home-cared my mother for over four years and watched her slowly deteriorate physically and mentally until she finally had to be admitted to a nursing facility.  Now, my employer has found enough hours for me to become a full-time employee WITH BENEFITS!  That’s wonderful, it really is – but I’d really, really like to have one day to myself, with nothing to do that I don’t want to do.

 

Alma appears to be getting better physically and mentally.  I pray that that will continue until she’s back to being a healthy, independent, productive person again.  Not having to have the fourth back surgery has done wonders for her (and my) morale.  For the time being, she’s taking Fosamax to strengthen her bones.  There are a couple of other treatment options involving injections or infusions.  Her hematologist and primary physician haven’t yet agreed on which treatment will be best.  There’ll be more tests to determine that.

 

Alma had had a bone density test a couple of years ago, and everything was normal.  Her osteoporosis was sudden-onset.  The medicos still don’t know for sure what caused it, but suspect it is a form of myeloma.  The kindly ER doctor told us that the majority of his osteoporosis patients are blue-eyed post-menopausal women with blond hair and with fair complexions.  Get your bone density tests gals!

 

I believe I’ve learned more medical terms in the past month than I’ll ever want to hear for the rest of my life.

 

My wife started complaining about a sore back a little over a month ago.  She went to a chiropractor a couple of times, but the pain kept getting worse.  Finally, she went to see her MD.  A CT scan was done, and she had a compression fracture of a couple of vertebrae.  A procedure called a kyphoplasty was performed to separate the vertebrae and fill the fracture. 

 

She was sent home to recuperate and we thought she’d be back to work in a few days, but in less than two weeks the pain was back worse than ever.  We decided to get her to the hospital emergency room where another CT scan was done.  Because of osteoporosis, she had more compression fractures on different vertebrae and a second kyphoplasty was scheduled for that same evening.

 

I went home because she would be in surgery for a couple of hours and then in the recovery room for another hour.  When I went back to the hospital, she told me they had postponed the kyphoplasty because her blood was “too thin.” 

 

The medicos at Kadlec Medical Center started scheduling and running tests.  Why did this woman have no iron in her blood?  One test “spiked” indicating the possibility of multiple myeloma (a rare form of bone cancer).  When we heard that, both Alma and I began fearing the worst.

 

After a restless and fearful night for both of us, one of the doctors told us that the multiple myeloma had pretty much been ruled out.  I went home feeling like the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders.  Shortly after I got home, Alma called me to say that another doctor had just been to her room and told her that multiple myeloma had not been completely ruled out.  Talk about yo-yoing emotions!

 

So, why was she so anemic?  A colonoscopy got performed as quickly as they could shoehorn her into the schedule.  No cysts, polyps or tumors in her colon – just diverticulosis (little sacs which can collect seeds and kernels which she must avoid for the rest of her life unless she wants to have an emergency surgery to remove part of her colon).

 

Finally, Thursday afternoon, about 5:10, Alma was wheeled into an operating room for her second kyphoplasty.  The procedure was a success again.  Friday she was infused with iron and Saturday, she was released to come home where she is once again recuperating.

 

Oh, yeah – I didn’t mention the MRI they wanted to do to take a closer look at some kind of cyst or growth on her liver.  With all the back pain, she just didn’t feel like trying to lie motionless on a narrow little slab with some kind of pad stuck under her butt for 45 minutes.  That can wait for another time.

 

Well, that’s how we’ve been spending our time the past few weeks.  This has been a very abbreviated version of all the events and the emotions they caused in our friends and family.  If nothing else, this has been a real wakeup call for Alma to start eating right and exercising.  It has always been easier to put off the weight loss program until tomorrow.  Tomorrow has arrived.