Coffee with All4Cure - Michael (3/3)

I was born on a farm in East Central, Illinois. I had a spectacular childhood thanks to my family and I being very well-grounded. I never dreamed I would get cancer, nor that I was going to travel very much. But I was motivated by President Kennedy to join the US Peace Corps in 1964, and lived and worked for three years as an agricultural extension agent in a coffee-growing area in the South of the country of Colombia. In that work, I was served well by my basic interests and skills in making things with my hands and learning to use local building materials. Fortunately life and work there also exposed a whole new world for me in so many ways, especially in learning how to better understand other people’s needs. There, and over my later career as a college professor working in many other countries around the world, I mentored many young researchers and graduate students. I helped them learn to do their own research. Supporting them was so great, and it helped me experience things around the world that I never dreamed about back on the farm. It was wonderful.

It is often said that you really learn a lot about yourself when you look at what you do through the eyes of someone else. This includes interactions with many new friends I now have in the Multiple Myeloma support group I belong to. Over my life, so many folks have helped me look into my own life through their eyes, so to speak.

One of the most satisfying experiences in all these times actually came soon before I hurt my ribs learning to play golf, which eventually revealed my myeloma. During the getaway time back in Colombia, some 48 years after I had been a Peace Corps Volunteer there, I also succeeded in returning to the area where I had worked and located the prior Colombian Director of the Program I had worked in. He was retired living in a small town with a wonderful house and a big garden. Behind his home, he was cultivating various vegetables, fruits, fish in a small pond and raising a few chickens. Imagine, he was still dedicated to implementing all the agricultural and nutrition recommendations and practices we had promoted in the program he directed so many years earlier aimed at helping Colombian rural families improve food intake and diets. What an inspiration to see his continued vision and staying power. What a blessing to have reconnected with him, and memories of such dedication help me stay focused, and as positive as possible, in fighting the battle to overcome my myeloma challenge.