Five years this week, January 11th 2019, I was taken to Peace Health ICU as I was fighting for my life. My potassium level (due to previously unknown renal failure) was 12 mmol/L, clearly far above the lethal level . . . and they could not get it down. It looked grave. After many tests and constant therapy, three days later, (after dialysis was started), the potassium had dropped to 8 mmol/L, still dangerously high . . . and I had a cause, Mulyple Myeloma. I began to look at the odds of my survival. With my exact diagnosis, the mean survival was seven months.

The best hope of a longer survival was a bone marrow transplant the following summer. It was brutal . . . and a complete failure. Depressing! By the fall of that year, things were looking bleak again. I will not go through the two years of trials with marginal benefit, but by 2022 I was started a monoclonal antibody (daratumumab), which hit a homerun within two weeks. Total remission. I am a realist and know, if I’m like all the other successful patients, that daratumumab will also stop working, but by then, new treatments will be available.

This journey has truly been remarkable and I am deeply grateful. In the fall of 2019 I would never have imagined that not only would I still be on this earth in 2024, but would have finished writing three new books and would be building a cottage by myself. No, this is not a supernatural miracle, but still I am thankful to God for the way he has made our antibody system and the knowledge he had made available for the brilliant researchers who developed daratumumab.

I am also very thankful for my friends here, many who have been with me since those long dark nights in ICU five years ago. I’m not sure I would still be here without you. During much of that time in isolation, you were my only friends.

I am also grateful for those of you who follow my vlogs. I have no delusions of grandeur with the series, but this is a small creative outlet to a hermit that basically doesn’t have much of a social life otherwise.

New Cancer Cottage / Healing Hut Episode

Tonight I uploaded episode 8 of my series “The Cancer Cottage / The Healing Hut” if you want to follow my progress of building my stone cottage.

On this episode, I wed my beautiful Civil War-era beams with my–equally old–French door. It was a lot of work, but in the end I think it turned out glorious, but beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, so they say. You can watch it HERE.

I have also uploaded Episode 10 of POST CHRISTIAN, The Loss of Factual Truth. This series is exclusively intended for those who have left Christianity or contemplating doing so. You can watch it HERE.

Previous episodes of all vlogs can be found here.

Mike