Excerpt
Ed was a man of deep faith, humility and strength. He was one of those people that jumped at the chance to help anyone in need; even if it hadn’t been asked of him. When there was any event going on in town, Ed more than gladly pitched in. He was a humble man who loved to work the land and use his hands, and had a strong commitment to God, family, friends and community. These qualities are getting much more difficult to find these days – especially the way the world is today. Morals are going out the window. If only there were more people like Ed. We’d all be so much better off.
Neither one of us had ever married; so there again, Ed and I both believed this was a match made by God. There were just too many “coincidences in life” that lead to our meeting, falling in love, and marrying.
We had 10 loving years of marriage before his family and I lost Ed to AML (Acute Myelogenous Leukemia) December 11, 2002. If in telling Ed’s story one life is saved, then his struggle and death will not have been in vain.
Ed had always been pretty healthy; just the usual childhood diseases. He was very strong and handled a lot of heavy and hard tasks and equipment at work and on the farm. It wasn’t until Ed was receiving his first chemotherapy treatment that we were privy to the information Ed had confided to a co-worker and close friend that he just didn’t seem to have the muscle strength he used to.
The year is 2001. Earlier on this year I had noticed Ed’s arm muscles appeared to be getting soft. His muscle tone wasn’t solid like before. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings and was hoping I was imagining the whole thing, so I never said anything to him about it. I believe Ed didn’t tell me about being so tired and less strength because he knew I was such a worrier. In retrospect, I probably would have mentioned something to him about the difference in muscle tone I had noticed. Perhaps that would have set off some red flags.
THIS IS WHAT NEEDS SPECIAL ATTENTION GIVEN TO: Earlier that year Ed knew he just wasn’t feeling right; so he went to his family doctor and told him what was going on. Ed was having continual pain in his privates, as well as his anal area. He continued to go to the doctor, hoping a cause for his achiness could be determined. Although a CT scan and X-rays were done, the doctor didn’t discover much out of the ordinary other than a variocele. Ed’s blood work came back normal; so Ed tried to ignore the pain. In the meantime, (between this duration of time and up until Ed was first diagnosed, he kept getting sharp pains in different joints throughout his body, along with tiredness and loss of strength. The sharp pains would start with his hand, wrist or thumb; his hip, back and so on. None of the doctors seemed to think much of it. [After Ed had started receiving treatment, I researched AML on the internet. As it turns out, up to one year prior of AML being detected, these are precisely the signs and symptoms a patient could have before the AML is diagnosed and starts ravaging the body.
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