The roller coaster just keeps going! My transformation from a 28 year old young adult into a 75 year old man is happening faster than the yearly crawl that my upcoming birthday (and life in general) normally promises. Not only did we get married young, have our kids young, get a minivan young, plant a church young, and have my first cancerous tumor young, but now I’m the proud owner of an oxygen bottle that I tote around with me wherever I go! I remember being creeped out as a child by people with the oxygen tubes that went across their upper lip–always wondering “how far up their noses do those tubes go!?”

Every day when I wake up I need a little help from my wife, the pill bottle, and the shower to get my back in good working condition. Due to me still recovering from the surgery and the lack of stomach muscles (because of my paralysis) my back is pretty jacked up. It spasms pretty often while in bed and when I wake up in the morning the tightness across the blades is quite extreme. But on Friday when I woke up it felt different. There were sharp pains in my mid back, side, and upper shoulder. The pains were so sharp that they kept me from taking deep breaths. We had plans later that day to drive two hours out of town to see some dear friends who had flown in from the midwest so I acted quickly and setup a massage for 11:30 to see if we couldn’t work through this stuff.

The massage didn’t make a huge difference with the sharp pains, but between that and some vicodin I was able to have a good time and make it ’till evening. Well, to make a short story not so long, come evening time the pain got worse and my ability to breath got worse. My wife called our oncologist who sent us directly to the ER. At the ER they diagnosed me with lots of small blood clots in my right lung and a few in my right leg. Even as they put me on blood thinners and IV drugs (always quite the fun experience) the pain got so extreme that at one point I found myself curled up on the hospital floor while trying to make it to the bathroom. Finally they put me on oxygen, found a drug that managed my pain better, and even sent me home that night.

It is crazy to think about how quickly things change. A few months ago I was a healthy 28 year old young man. A few days ago I was too young to have cancer. Now I’m a 75 year old man in need of some ear plugs ’cause kids these days play their music too damn loud!

In an instant, in one morning, in one week everything can change. And there’s nothing we can do about it. We can fight it and be miserable. We can avoid it and live in ignorance. Or we can embrace it as a part of being human and grow from it. I hope I choose door number three.