Tim's birthday

Superbowl Sunday fell on Tim's 44th birthday this year. We had a nice day. Took our
daughter and her friends bowling and went to our friends' superbowl party. It's hard to
believe how much has changed since his b-day last year. We took our parents to a Toby Keith
concert. It was our daughter's first concert and Tim's dad's first(at age 70). No worries. Just
good times. I suddenly remembered something that did happen last year that I realize was
because of his then undiagnosed MM. His lips were chapped and his bottom lip split. The next
morning his lip was blown up like the guy who plays Bubba in "Forrest Gump". We were all
joking him about it and calling him names. It was all funny at the time but I now know this
was because he was really sick and had low white blood cells. It made me so sad to think
we were mocking him so bad and he was so sick and we didn't know it. We just got word last
week that a guy we know lost his battle with colon cancer. He was only 45 and has 3 kids,
the youngest being just 4 or 5. I didn't want to tell Tim but I myself hate to be patronized
and I knew he'd find out from someone else and figure out that I'd kept it from him so I
told him. It's impossible not to think about the what "ifs" when faced with this kind of reality.
When cancer touches your life, you feel like it's all you see or hear about. I am always hearing
of someone being diagnosed, dying, battling it and the worst stories are the little kids. When I
could give to charity, I always gave to St. Jude to help save those kids and kids everywhere.
Tim thinks he is going to do the mini-allo transplant. We are very scared but with the auto
not working, the docs feel this is really the best thing to do. They feel the failed SCT is not a
good sign. He will probably start Velcade in about 2 weeks and get his numbers down as low
as they'll go and then onto the mini-allo. I pray things go well. This is an excruciating decision
but I guess we are kinda more afraid not to do it when the docs talk to us about his case.
For now we are very busy renovating the apt. and running his business. I wish we had less
stress in our life but we just gotta get through all this. We hope to sneak in a quick trip to
Disneyworld before the real tough stuff starts. We'll see.