Today - I'm not going to tell you anything about my runs, I'd rather give up this space to Jon and Pat. The following is the presentation that they made at the recent Eagan Relay for Life.
Relay for Life – August 5, 2011
Pat: I’m Pat Eveslage and this is my husband Jon. We live in Burnsville. I work at Lloyd’s Barbecue in Mendota Heights and Jon works at Thomson Reuters here in Eagan. Our son Paul is 23 and our daughter Elena is 19. With all the amazing survivors, caregivers, friends and volunteers here tonight, we are honored to be here to share our story with you.
Jon: Our story begins late in 2007. During my annual physical, I told my doctor about some unusual symptoms I was having. A lymph node in my neck was swollen and I was always warm and having night sweats. In January, 2008, I had a lymph node biopsy and a bone-marrow biopsy and found that I had stage 4, follicular non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a slow-growing blood cancer. I was 48 years old.
We spent the rest of 2008 trying to get the cancer into remission. Four different types of chemo were tried – 16 rounds all together – until there were positive results late in the year.
Pat: What a long year it was! Jon was able to go by himself to the treatments and didn’t have many side effects or miss much work for most of the year. The last treatment, given at Christmas, was pretty hard on him. That’s when my sister-in-law, the pharmacist, said it was probably working.
Jon: While I was going through the chemo treatments, my doctor suggested that I look into having a stem cell transplant. It was the only hope to completely cure the cancer once it was in remission. I worked with the University of Minnesota Blood and Marrow transplant program. Because the cancer was already stage 4, my doctor didn’t think an autologous transplant, where you use your own stem cells, would be effective. I would have to find a donor. I didn’t find a donor match with any of my three brothers or anyone in the adult donor pool. The only option left was a dual-cord transplant, where they use the umbilical cord stem cells from two newborn babies. Fortunately, we found two babies that matched. (And we later learned that one was from Europe!)
In March 2009, I had one last round of chemo and radiation to destroy my bone marrow and immune system to allow the donor stem cells to grow. The transplant is painless and just like a blood transfusion. The stem cells find their way into your bone marrow and begin making new blood. After 100 days, one of the two types of stem cells becomes dominant and creates your new blood. It’s really quite an amazing process, and we are lucky to live so close to the U of M, one of the only hospitals in the country that does dual-cord stem cell transplants.
Pat: Jon spent 10 days in isolation before the transplant and 17 more in the hospital after the transplant. Once home, he had to return to the BMT clinic at the U every day for the first week. He couldn’t drive at first, but fortunately our son was home to drive him for some of the trips. It wasn’t until August – almost 5 months later – that Jon’s immune system had recovered enough for him to return to work.
Care giving for a stem cell transplant patient involves a lot of things. Jon’s immune system was knocked out, so mold, dust, etc. can cause infections. He was pretty weak at first, and later when he went out he had to wear a mask. He wasn’t allowed to mow the lawn or work in the yard. It was a long summer for both of us.
Jon: By the end of July I was feeling better. Just before I went back to work, we decided to take a family vacation to Copper Mountain in Colorado. We enjoyed the scenery and some short hikes. The kids went horseback riding and we relaxed. Near the end of the trip, Pat wasn’t feeling well and we made a trip to the local hospital. We found that she had mountain sickness, not uncommon for flat-landers like us from Minnesota. She was given oxygen at the hospital and by the time we were back to Denver, she was feeling better. Little did I know that it was soon going to be my turn to be the caregiver.
Pat: I still didn’t feel very well after we returned to Minnesota. I was run down and tired all the time. My friend, Marilyn, advised me to see my PA, so just before Labor Day I saw her and she immediately asked if I had had a colonoscopy. All I could say was, “No, when I turned 50, Jon got sick and I couldn’t think about myself, let alone schedule a procedure like that.” So, she said, “You’re having one now!” And, two days later I did. Well, the news was not good. I’ll never forget the doc’s face as he said there was a mass and he thought it was probably colon cancer. All this the day before my birthday! So, you do what you have to do. They assigned me to a surgeon who was wonderful. The surgery was successful but, unfortunately, they found cancer in five of the 27 lymph nodes that they had removed. This meant that chemo was necessary to make sure it was gone. So, at the end of October (after a wonderful weekend with four close friends on the North Shore) I began six months of treatments. My chemos were more debilitating than Jon’s had been. But, I looked on it as prevention, I was certain the cancer was gone. I also knew I would not be able to make it through those months without the help of my friends and family. Every two weeks I made the drive to St. Louis Park with a friend in tow. It helped me to not dread the day and to know that I had 3 hours with that special friend. One time I even was next door to a dear friend, who has since passed, and we spent the time together. What a blessing! In fourteen trips, I went with 11 different people. I will never forget those afternoons or the wonderful nurses who cared for me. My mother cared for me after the surgery and on the weekends after chemo. I was able to make it to my job until the last few treatments, when I needed almost a week to recover. My Bible Study friends, my Bunco neighbors, old friends from high school, work colleagues, and family were instrumental in helping our family through those months of both our journeys with cancer. Meals were brought, prayers were said, fleece chemo blankets were made for us and we received wonderful e-mails. Even our daughter was cared for by her youth group at church. All these things happened because we were not afraid to share what was happening.
Jon: We live in a time where it is OK to tell people you have cancer, and that is a blessing. Everyone must handle their situation in the way they’re most comfortable, and we learned from those before us that you cannot walk it alone. No one can help you if you don’t tell them what you need. No one can pray for you if they don’t know you need the prayers. Many amazing things happened to us. We know God was involved and continues to be here. It’s now over two years since my transplant and the cancer is still in remission. This past winter I was once again refereeing high school basketball games. Pat has had good CT scans and labs for a year, and her latest colonoscopy (done by her wonderful surgeon) showed no cancer. She doesn’t even have to have another one for three years. Thank you.
Notes: Autologous (own) vs. Allogenic (others) stem cells
4 chemos: 1. R-CVP 2. R-CHOP 3. R-ICE 4. R-DHAP
And so I run...
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