Dave and I are currently in Little Rock for one of his regular checkups. MRI, blood work, bone marrow biopsy and a chat with our doctor to see how things are going. Believe it or not we enjoy coming. We are here in a very different way than the long year of treatment and weeks of staying in an apartment far from home. We stay in a nice hotel, sometimes on the River Market, go out to eat, someone makes our bed and tidies up the room. This time we are here with another myeloma couple we like a lot and have become quite close to and enjoyed a BBQ’d dinner last night at Whole Hog Cafe. We have been looking forward to our good fortune to have our checkups coincide. They live in Illinois.
When we get to the campus its always a pleasure to see the faces of the staff light up when we walk in and then with big smiles assess Dave and comment on how great he looks. Its a bit like coming home to a big family. I enjoy it. Occasionally we run into patients we have met a long the way who are where we are in their myeloma journey and I usually recognize the caregiver first because the patient has hair and is walking tall and its not the way I remember them when we met – ravaged by the disease impact, the fear, worry, and of course the chemotherapy. So for the most part it is a joyful time to come back to Little Rock for our checkups.
As we touched down on the tarmac I noticed I had received a call from a consulting group I’m working with regarding some speaking engagements they want me to do in the future on Myeloma and Caregiving. Telling our story if you will. I went through some training with a group of other myeloma patients and caregivers. None of these folks had treated at Little Rock, but at their local hospitals and cancer centers. For many, it was the first opportunity for them to hang out and meet others with their disease. It was a marvelous weekend for me.
I learned from my contact that we lost one of our group who had participated in the training. I was suddenly so sad. He was part of a Barber Shop Quartet and simply delightful. His wife/caregiver was his ‘bride’. They had only recently married and their story was the stuff of The Movie of the Week or feel good Hallmark Channel. It was delightful, funny and touching as they shared how they met and then the difficult journey of his diagnosis with Multiple Myeloma.
I have talked about this before… meeting people that you know may not make it. You can either choose to stick to yourself and not get to know them, or you can reach out and become friends with the risk that it may be short lived. All I can tell you is that I prefer the latter – still. To have met him and laughed with him and known a little of who he was, was worth every tear that has fallen down my cheek.
He continued to sing in his quartet summoning all his strength in his performances to lift his arms over head in their choreographed routine filled with shoo-waps and doo-waps. His wife said it was as if he just came alive on stage in those moments, despite the tremendous fatigue, weakness and sometimes pain he was in. I feel tremendously enriched beyond measure to have crossed his path – he ‘touched’ me.
Philosophers often write that “Death is proof that we have lived.”
He LIVED, an amazing life… and I am honored to have known him. If it weren’t for Multiple Myeloma, I probably would not have met him, which would have been the real tragedy – for me anyway.
