Getting Started

December 16, 2005:  The day that changed my life.  It wasn’t the first such day - August, 1979 and May 26, 1986 - the month I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior, and the day I got married - they also qualify as life changing events.  But that fateful December day when my husband was suddenly admitted to the hospital . . . well, that was different.  By 6:00 pm, we heard the words “Multiple Myeloma” for the first time.  It didn’t mean much to us.  After all, our knowledge was limited to the fact that Phil’s kidney’s weren’t working properly.

By the next morning, however, we both knew what Multiple Myeloma was.  An incurable, always fatal, blood cancer.  At that time, life expectancy was 3 - 5 years.  We were devastated.

While enduring hemodialysis three times a week, Phil dealt with induction therapy of Thalidomide and Decadron (”Dex”), which left him with severe muscle wasting, and toxicity from too much Thalidomide.  That was followed by an autologous stem cell transplant, which put Phil in complete remission, and which restored much of his kidney function - not enough for him to get off dialysis,  but enough to eliminate the need for a special, very restrictive, diet.  June, 2007, brought an end to hemodialysis, as Phil switched to peritoneal dialysis, which is done at home.  Last month was the end of Phil’s remission, and he started on Velcade and Decadron at the beginning of this month.

We’ve just been through the two most difficult weeks we’ve had in a long time.  Phil’s dialysis catheter malfunctioned.  Of course, the surgeon was away on vacation, and we had to wait until this past Monday to see him.  From the first sign of a problem to his surgery to correct it this past Thursday, Phil endured painful and very difficult draining of the dialysis fluid three times a day.  We filled him up tonight, and will see what happens when he tries to drain in the morning.  Perhaps he will be able to resume using his automated cycler machine Monday night.

All that leads to the reason for this blog.  I had intended my Holding Faith blog to be a place where I could write about being my husband’s caregiver, but that was not to be as Phil started reading it.  I am planning to keep this blog private in the sense that I’m not going to let people know it exists; if you have stumbled on it, you are welcome to read it, and leave me comments.

And so it begins.