Happy birthday, Velma!

In a few days, my mother will be 90 years old. This evening, all of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchild who live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area had an impromptu get together to celebrate her birthday. Here are a few pictures of the event.

Seriously Now

So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom. PS. 90:12

The doctor stonewalls at making a prediction for how long I will survive. Likewise, I dodge at giving an answer to friends and family, in large part because I don't know. Then there are so many variables. I would hate to tell someone that I was going to live for five more years and then still be going strong at seven, and them think I had lied to them, or for some, broken a promise. Likewise if I told them 20 years, and then died from the cancer after three.

From the outset, we have declared our lives are fully in the hands of an omnipotent and loving Heavenly Father, who could heal me of the cancer by whatever means He chooses, could prolong my life for however many years He chooses, or could take me home next week with a bad case of the sniffles. It is all in His hands.

From a human perspective, however, attached is one helpful piece of information that Carol and I obtained from the myeloma conference that we attended two weekends ago. It is a chart that tracks overall survival of myeloma patients by decade, from the time of their diagnosis. Here are some facts or conclusions that can be drawn from the chart:

1. There has always been a small percentage of myeloma patients, about 10%, who have made it past 10 years beyond diagnosis, and seem to go on indefinitely with this as a chronic condition. These are the outlier data points, but there seem to be quite a few of them. At the conference, one of our speakers was a seemingly healthy man who had been in treatment for 19 years, and a report was given of a person who had been a patient for 31 years. Geraldine Ferraro has been a myeloma patient since 1998, 11 years.
2. The average survival period for a myeloma patient over the past decade, however, is only about 4.5 years after diagnosis. Again from the human perspective, it reasonable to assume that I would do better than average because that number obviously includes all myeloma patients - those diagnosed in late stages of the disease, those who are elderly, those who die from other causes / complications, etc. I was diagnosed very early in the disease before it had attacked my skeletal frame or any organs of my body, at a relatively young age, and in otherwise excellent health.
3. That average 4.5 year survival period over the past decade is a vast improvement over the 2.5 years after diagnosis for the preceding decade. This means, among other things, that the treatments are getting better. The longer a patient can survive, the greater his chances of overall survival due to new drugs and therapies being developed.

Conclusion: We don't know. Review the chart and make your own conclusions if you like. I was diagnosed in September 2007, almost two years ago. My plan is to substantially beat the average and hopefully become an outlier data point, but leave it all in God's hands and not waste a single day in the meantime.

Grand Pics

(Updated 7/6/09): This blog needs some pictures of grandchildren. Here are three of my most favorite recent pictures of Alyssa. The first is from when we visited my mother at her nursing home, with Mom asleep in the background. The second is of Alyssa in a little pool in our back yard when we kept her one evening while her parents went out for dinner. Finally, a picture of her helping us on our Saturday shopping expedition for a patio table and chairs. Note she is checking not only the comfort of the chair, but also its price tag. From our various shopping expeditions we have learned that she enjoys Garden Ridge, Lowe's and Home Depot, she is okay with Target, Wal-Mart and grocery stores (if she gets to hold the shoppong list), but doesn't care too much for Big Lots.

Bad Squirrel George

A few weeks ago, I wrote about George, the friendly squirrel who lives in my back yard.  I spoke of how George kept me close company while I was potting some summer plants, and how particularly pleased I was with three new pecan trees I had found sprouted in some of the flower pots.  I spoke of recognizing George’s likely involvement in the process, and of thinking him, and rewarding him with peanuts.

Ten days ago, I walked into the back yard and saw George with the most guilty look I have ever seen on a squirrel’s face.  He took one look at me, turned and bolted, and hid himself from my presence just as surely as Adam did hide himself from the Lord in the Garden. “George, where art thou?” I called, but I received no answer in return.

I looked around the back yard to see what could be wrong, and saw an old dead branch, about 6 or 8 feet long and as big around as my forearm, laying on the ground.  It had not been there 2 hours earlier when I mowed the grass.  I could imagine George and some of his adolescent squirrel pals jumping up and down on the branch, laughing and having a big time until it broke and they all came crashing down to the ground. “Oh, well,” I thought, “squirrels will be squirrels. No harm done.” Besides, that dead branch had been outside my upstairs office window, and I was glad to see it down without my having to climb and cut.

Then I saw the REAL CRIME.  George had uprooted the new little pecan trees to get to the pecan nuts still a part of the root.  He knew it was wrong and that is why he looked so guilty.  Truly, all creation has fallen and gone corrupt.

George, if you  read my blog, please know that I still love you and I forgive you. If you will plant me some more pecans next winter, I will try to grown them again next spring, but I will put them in a squirrel proof cage for their first year to help you resist temptation.

Cancer Training

This weekend, Carol and I attended a conference sponsored by the International Myeloma Foundation here in Dallas. It was very informative as we learned about current treatment methodologies and upcoming drugs, ways of handling side effects of the chemotherapy, and other good stuff.

Leading doctors in this disease nationwide were there, and it was good to listen to them, and chat with them between sessions, as well. Some of these men have been cancer doctors longer than I have been an engineer (that’s a long time), and their names are on testing procedures for evaluation of this disease. There also were very helpful sessions by a cancer nurse, and a myeloma patient.

The top question on every patient’s mind is what are current survival predictions for patients in their situation. One patient there had been in treatment for 19 years, and there was a report of another patient who has been in treatment for 31 years. These are the outlier data points, but praise God for outlier data points. Then I met a man who looks healthier than me, and has been in treatment for only 3 years, but his cancer is not responding to the drugs, and the prognosis is not good. It is all over the field.

All in all, it was a good conference, and I am glad we went.

Father’s Day 2009

Today is Father’s Day, and I would like to pay tribute to my father, James Vernon Bennett, Jr., now deceased. It’s been a little over two years since Dad died in April 2007. The morning after we buried him, I went out to the woods behind their house to spend some time alone. I found an acceptable stump and sat down. It was cold spring morning in Arkansas, and I shifted my body so that my back caught the fullest effect of the sunlight to keep me warm, and remembered it was something my Dad had taught me to do as we worked outside in the cold together.

A father teaches his son many things. Among the things my Dad taught me by example more than words was the value of hard work and honesty in business dealings, and the importance of a man taking his family to church on a weekly basis.

I took this picture of Dad about a year or two before he died. It was autumn, and I had taken him for a ride in his truck, and we walked out to an overlook over the Little Red River just outside Heber Springs. It is my favorite picture of Dad.

Here’s to you, Dad. I hope all readers have had as wonderful a Father’s Day as I did.

Night Trains & Pianos

Some of you know my time-wasting dilema of a few weeks ago as I tried to find Lyrics, etc. to a particular song, which was incorrectly titled on an instrumental CD as "Night Train to Memphis." When I found the lyrics, I said, "No way those lyrics can go to that song," and the time-wasting began. Anyway, with only wasting but a small portion of your time, here is a link to the coolest instrumental (piano) version I ever found of Night Train to Memphis (This guy, Alan Dale, has some other neat stuff on You Tube, too).



And here is a really good version of "Night Train", though the version I heard and started this quest was a Bluegrass/Blues version with harmonica, fiddle, bass guitar and drums, and was incorrectly labeled on the CD as "Night Train to Memphis," rather than the boogie woogie version here.