To Our Friends and Family-

It's due to your love, thoughts, wishes, prayers and overwhelming support that we've created this site or blog I guess. If it were me that had this dreaded condition, instead of Ret, one phone call would have done it. Sorry I just had to throw that in. Again that is why we created this site to help you follow her journey.

As many of you know and for those who are visiting here for the first time Ret has been diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a blood borne cancer that affects the skeletal structure. Luckily it's treatable however as with most cancers not curable. I won't bore you with what I know and don't know at this time, however there a number of sites available that you can visit that will provide those of you who might be interested in researching this condition further.

Safe to say it's been along journey already to get to this point, we've had about five months of trial and error numerous doctors, tests, retests, pushes, prods, needles and I guess too much more to mention. That said we've finally reached the point where treatment started, actually yesterday. We're lucky that her treatment is a daily dose of a drug called Thalidomide, yes the 1950's drug that was called "the flipper baby drug", you can research that as well. But basically it helps cut off the blood supply to the cancer cells. I know that may not sound lucky but at least we're not making daily trips to some clinic somewhere in the middle of the day. Plus it's only $5,300.00 per months supply, thank god for insurance. The goal is to get the cancer into remission, capture some of Ret's bone marrow, freeze it then do a "Stem Cell Transplantation" know as "Autologous Stem Cell Transplantation" which is using the patients own cells. This has proven be more effective than using donors for the transplant. As with all treatments they are dependent upon how the patient accepts or rejects those treatments and the time lines for those are just as varied.

Hopefully this has given you a little background on Ret's condition, our plans for moving forward and a way to keep in touch as we move ahead on her journey to recovery.

Also we hope that you understand that this is the best way for us to keep so many of you up to date on her progress. Again as I said earlier, if it was me not problem one phone call would do it, but with Ret we don't have enough phones, phone lines or time to answer each of you individually.

Again, thanks for all your support.

All Our Love
Ret and Jack