Coffee with All4Cure - Tom (1/3)

I started climbing mountains at 9 years old, and I have climbed and hiked all over the world. I grew up in the Seattle area and now live in Vancouver BC. My wife Lisa and I met at work and after I convinced her that it was a good idea, I got her hooked on hiking, scuba diving, and bird watching. We trekked in Nepal several times, went diving in Micronesia, and have been to over 110 countries (me) and 85 countries (her). When I started having knee problems with pain in my hips and back, it wasn’t surprising because I’d been told years earlier that a climbing injury would come back to haunt me. Sure enough, I did need surgery on my knee, but things got worse. It was a few months after the knee surgery when I was diagnosed with myeloma. The pain in my hip and back was not referred pain from my knee, it was from lesions and vertebral compressions. I ended up three inches shorter and with a fractured pelvis. I was mostly in a chair while things started to heal.

I started chemo and radiation in April 2014 and was in pretty bad shape. Lisa dug into learning about myeloma and became the medical concierge. During the screening for an autologous stem cell transplant, they found that I’ve had an acute exacerbation of pulmonary fibrosis that no one knew I had. My transplant was canceled and with my cancer in remission after five months of induction therapy, I started on a course of prednisone for the lungs and began physical and respiratory therapy. The lungs did improve, although they were permanently damaged.