Point of View

Indomitable spirit teaches grace in face of death

By Carl Heintze

For the past week I have been haunted by Tom. That's because I just returned from visiting him in another city.

Tom is a dear friend who is dying. He has been dying for three years, slowly, a day at a time, but he refuses to give up. Tom suffers from multiple myeloma. Myeloma is sometimes called bone cancer, but that doesn't seem an accurate way to describe it.

Rather, it is a disorder of the bone marrow. The marrow of our bones is where our red blood and other cells are made. After they form, they migrate through the lattice of the bone into the blood stream. This is the normal process. It happens over and over again because our blood constantly needs to be replenished with new red cells.

In multiple myeloma something goes wrong and the marrow begins producing too much of a specific blood protein. This has the effect of clogging the arteries and of weakening the bone.

No one knows what causes myeloma. Nor does anybody have a cure for it. It is inevitably fatal, usually in about three years, and often accompanied by great pain.

It usually is diagnosed by the appearance of pain and the discovery of a specific blood protein in amounts far greater than normal. Thus, it usually is advanced by the time the sufferer discovers he or she has it.

In Tom's case, it turned up during a routine physical examination. The protein villain showed up in abundance in blood tests. At first Tom tended not to believe it. He felt fine.

After a few months he suffered what appeared to be a stroke. He lost the use of his right hand. Gradually other complications followed. Today he can move his mouth and his lips and he can talk, although much more slowly than when he was well.

Otherwise, he is completely helpless. He is essentially a quadriplegic. He has to be fed, to be moved in a wheelchair and he cannot sit up for very long. Most of the time he spends in bed with the constant attendance of his wife, who has managed so far to care for him at home.

She has put Tom in a hospital bed. She sleeps beside it. She bought a van fitted with a handicapped lift. With this she can get him in and out of bed by arranging a kind of sling and then using a hoist to lift him into a wheelchair.

His care is her sole and constant concern. She has little time for anything else.

Both she and Tom have yielded to the disease grudgingly, an inch at a time. They welcome visitors; they never complain; and they are able to manage his care without outside help--at least so far.

Tom really has never given up hope. He has tried experimental drugs. He has been subjected to having all his blood plasma extracted and replaced, a job that took five days in the hospital. He remains unremittingly cheerful.

Both he and his wife openly discuss the bleak future. His doctor has given him about three months more, but as his wife says, "They said that a year ago and he's still here. That's because he's a fighter."

But he's a quiet and humorous one.

Fortunately, Tom so far has suffered no pain, but he had a friend who recently died of the same disease who did. Thus, he considers himself lucky. This is hard to believe and yet there is his testimony. He is willing himself to remain alive.

Visiting Tom is both an inspiring and a heart-wrenching experience. The ravages of the disease are plainly to be seen. But so is Tom's indomitable spirit and the indomitable spirit of his wife.

She and Tom have been married for more than fifty years. They were high school sweethearts. They married as soon as they finished college and raised five children.

Tom is an avid football fan, especially of the San Francisco 49ers. For years he had season tickets and he gave them up reluctantly only a couple of years ago. Until he was stricken with myeloma, he played golf three days a week. Now he watches it on television.

Although I do not envy him his illness, I do envy the way in which he has come to face death. Visiting him makes me wonder if I could do as well. I don't think I could, nor would I want to try, but I will forever be inspired by his courage.

He has shown me how both to live and how to die with grace. Few can claim this as their last reward. But Tom can. And he has.

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