Living Strong...

Most of you know my father, Phil. About 4 or 5 months ago the 70 year old was at the gym doing bench-presses when he hurt his chest. He was in a lot of pain and then he crushed a disk in his spine compensating for the chest pain. Electing to have surgery to reconstruct the disk he went under the knife. The disk was repaired successfully, but while the doctor was constructing the disk, he took a bit of my dad’s bone marrow to do a biopsy on it where to everyone's surprise it came back positive for cancer.

Multiple Myeloma is the name of the beast, and it is taking my father from me. I have watched over the last 4 months my dad become ill, lose weight, and I believe that he has become addicted to the massive amounts of pain killers he has to take just to get through the day. Is only true blissful pain free time is when he is asleep in which he does almost 20 plus hours per day now.

When we talk he has this way about him that if he died today he would miss us all but he knows that it would end the pain he is in. It’s weird, he says that he is not going anywhere for a long time because he needs to see me get married, get to know his new daughter in law, and play with his grandchildren, he says these things but I can see it in his eyes that he is truly indifferent...I don't blame him.

We are currently looking into a few places for treatment, those being U.S.C. and U.C.L.A. Medical Centers and the Mayo Clinic. If anyone has heard of another center please let me know.

I wanted to write this out for a few reasons; one is because I just need to let everyone know what is going on. The second is to help myself. I know I have not been myself lately and for that I truly apologize. For some reason I still keep my feelings all bottled up inside and let them run their course in me. It is not easy to sit back and watch my dad in pain to the point that he wishes he was not here with us anymore, but maybe if I write these things out and share them it will ease my pain somewhat…I do feel better already just typing out these few paragraphs.

The third reason is I wanted to bring the struggle of fighting this disease to my friends, not necessarily shoving it to you, but making you aware of it. Cancer has become personal to me. I no longer can sit on the sideline and tell myself that it is “their” problem anymore. My dad has cancer. If you would like to join the fight here is a place to start, (Livestrong) it only cost $10, give them out to your friends and you will not only help my dad but the millions of others that have cancer as well.