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Jon Gabriel @exjon - My Birthday Gave Me Cancer
I didn’t know if I would mention this publicly, but I keep getting questions about my health. Let’s just say it’s been an interesting few months.
In mid-September, my lower back hurt, so my primary doc signed me up for physical therapy. I kept up with that for four appointments until my back couldn’t take it anymore. Insurance finally approved an MRI in mid-October and found two bulging disks in my lower back. After a few unfruitful Urgent Care and ER visits, on Nov. 5, insurance finally approved a spine specialist to give me epidural shots to those disks, which should have taken care of the issue.
Instead, my back kept feeling worse. Throughout October, I could barely leave the house except for doctors’ appointments. By the start of November, I could barely leave the bed. They scheduled a second set of epidurals, but I finally got an appointment with a top neurologist.
That was Friday, Nov. 21, my birthday, and the neurologists soon figured out it wasn’t just bulging discs. She immediately checked me in to the hospital next door and they ran every kind of test you can think of. (That neurologist was the only one who found it odd I’d lost 30 lbs. in 2-3 months.)
After several hours, the ER doc informed me I had cancer running up and down my spine which had now moved into my ribs. The cancer probably came from somewhere else (like the colon, lungs, etc.), so it was basically all over my body. Understandably, I thought I’d be dead in a month or two.
Tests continued and by Saturday, Nov. 22, a large team of doctors had a pow-wow and began to think I had multiple myeloma, a rare blood cancer that targets individual bones. They had only found two tumors – one that had completely destroyed a thoracic vertebra in my back, and one in a neck (cervical) vertebra. Turns out The Big C didn’t have me down yet.
First thing Monday, Nov. 24, the neurologist performed a five-hour surgery to remove the thoracic tumor, then inserted rods and a cage to connect the vertebrae above and below it. While he was in there, he took a bone biopsy. That tricky bit of business went perfectly. Surgeon’s a rock star.
On Tuesday, Nov. 25, he performed the second surgery to fix my neck, which also went great. And on Wednesday, a bone marrow biopsy was taken from my hip.
Since then, it’s been a whole lot of pain, trippy meds, and fitting me for custom neck and braces. With those braces, I’ve been able to stand and shuffle around a bit, sit upright a few times (which I hadn’t done since October), and even write this little missive.
As it stands now, I should be moved tomorrow to an acute rehab facility, where I’ll have about 7-10 days to build strength and regain the ability to do common tasks.
Then I’ll get chemo via injections/pills, a method that is unlikely to cause hair loss and other common symptoms.
According to my oncologist and many other experts, multiple myeloma currently has some of the best outcomes for cancer treatments right now. (They still think that’s the type I have and the bone marrow results should confirm/reject that idea soon.)
All I can ask for is your prayers and whole lot of them. They’ve made a big difference.
Thank you.
https://x.com/exjon/status/1996032673681473834