My Wife has Brain Cancer…Elizabeth Marek’s Journey

My wife, Elizabeth has Stage IV Glioblastoma with Pnet.

I’d like to start this off by saying, we have a donation site set up through Go Fund Me.  Click Go Fund Me to donate to the future of our family.

We have two children, now a boy, Reynolds who is now 7 and the other our daughter Helaina, nearly 3.  Elizabeth was diagnosed with a fist sized brain tumor in 2013 while pregnant with our second child.  She had headaches that made her vomit and she could not hold any food down.  Three times I took her to the ER and each time the hospital would give her Tylenol and fluids and send her home.  We requested an MRI multiple times, but they would not do an MRI.

The Karate Kid: Daniel is the REAL Bully?

A few years ago I watched an episode of a show called, How I Met Your Mother.  One of the characters says he wants to meet the Karate Kid.  When they are able to bring Daniel to his party, he gets upset and explains that Johnny is the Karate Kid and Daniel is the bully.  That made me think about it a little bit and I was convinced.  Now this video comes out and it is dead on.

Now we all know in the movie Daniel is the Karate Kid, but this is funny.  You Tube user J. Matthew Turner did a great job if he is the one who made this video, it is a lot of fun.

I Found My Reason

Please visit Elizabeth’s Go Fund Me pager here and follow her progress on Facebook by liking her page here.  Please if you can help us and share her story.

I am not a perfect person, this is true, but I am lucky, I found my reason.  I found her in 2003.  Elizabeth and I started dating in late 2003, I will never forget how beautiful she was when I first saw her.  I was working at Toys r Us at the time and I was up on the over stock shelves and I saw her walk in the door.  She walked all the way over to where I was, to see her brother, who I worked with.  It wasn’t long before we started dating.  It was a lot of fun at first but when February 2004 came around, things got hard.  My mother passed away from liver cancer and I went to a dark place.  Elizabeth did all she could to keep things together, but I was in a bad place, so in August 2005, 10 years ago, we broke up with me.

There were so many reasons for the break-up.  I was not moving forward, I was not a very good boy friend and I know these things.  Time did feel like it stopped when my mom died and she was not the only victim in my dark reign.  After our break-up, I slipped deeper and deeper into a dark place.  I was drinking and hanging out with girls I had no business being around.  There were some good times in there, I had good friends trying to help me out of my darkness.  Edgar, Dan and Tony all did what they could to bring me back from perdition.  One day, I started to realize what was going on with me and figured it out.  I pulled my crap together and I knew what I had to do to get Elizabeth back.

Beware…the Army

Good title?  Maybe, today is the 17th anniversary of the day I shipped off to the US Army basic training.  It is weird to think it has been 17 years since I was tricked into joining the US military.  Yes, I was tricked and I will explain.

When I was 17, all of my friends were getting ready for college or jumping head long in the work force, I did not know what I was going to do.  Honestly I hadn’t thought much about it.  My mom asked me what my plans were and I did say, “I guess college is the next step.”  We were not smart, she asked how I would afford to pay for it and I had no answers.  I was confused and did not know what to do.  So I talked to a friend at work, I was working at KFC, that was my High School job.  She told me to look into the Marines, she planned to join the Marines.  I thought about it and she got me in contact with her recruiter.  I had some cool meetings and learned a lot, but my mom had some concerns.  My step-dad was abusive and my mom blamed his time in the Marines and she told me about all of the times he was away from the family.  She told me to look into the Army or Air Force.

Life on Replay

Do you ever feel like everyday is a repeat of the day before.  Maybe it’s a new day and the problems are different, but really, are they?

I took a weeks vacation from my day job last week and I am currently in the second day back and it’s business as usual.  Yesterday is today and today is yesterday.  I work in a retail environment, but not a typical situation.  Customer service is king in every retail environment, but I work not only with customers, but how the store us set.  It used to be an interesting job.  I’d visit 4 different stores a week and each store was different.  Same company, same work, but different people and challenges.  This made the job more interesting.  Now things have changed, I am in one store everyday, same people, same job, each day feels like the last and I just think, “it’s tuesday, only 4 days to Saturday…”

Good Bye Christopher Lee

What a life, what a career in acting.  This man was not only an amazing actor who has over 280 acting credits to his career.  He also fought in World War II.  In the special features on the Lord of the Rings and he talked about being stabbed in the back and how it should sound, which makes me wonder how many people he may have stabbed in the back.  Was Christopher Lee a British assassin?  That may be, but he is also Dracula.

How Do You Deal With Anxiety?

This is a big and good question that I have been faced with the last week or so.  I may have had an anxiety attack a couple of weeks back.  I was worried about bills, my wife and stressing about how unhappy I am at my current job that I’ve been working for 8 years.  I had a break and sat in my car and thought I was on the verge of a heart attack.

Well an Emergency Room visit later, My heart is strong, blood looks good, the x-rays shown nothing.  Doctor tells me I have a strained muscle in my chest that could have caused an Anxiety attack.  So I go about my business and get back to normal.  It didn’t take too much or too long to put it behind me.  Or so I thought.

Days after turning 35 I began to have what I thought were heart palpations, the feeling was overwhelming.  It would start around my sternum and feel like it exited my neck.  This would happen 8 times an hour and it freaked me out.  So I called my doctor to see about a stress test.  When this wave in my chest came over me, I felt my heart beat and thought it may be rapid.

I had my wife check my heart rate and see if she could feel anything when these waves would come over me.  She said nothing changed.  Finally I complained about my chest pain in my sternum and on the left side of my body.  This was my red flag, my heart is on the left side.  She massaged my chest, my pectoral muscle and found a really painful spot.  That increased the pain the following days.

Before I Die

It may be time to do more about my life and more about my past.  This way, it is here for, well whoever wants to know about me.  I worry about mortality, especially with my wife and her brain cancer.  It makes me think more about my own mortality and I worry.   I know I need to change I have two small children, who I love with everything I have.  I want to be there for them, but there is a lot of work I need to do for myself.  Eating better, more exercise to start, I also need a good amount of dental work.  My hopes are to surpass my mother in life.  I am 35 now and she lived to 44.  Sometimes I worry that I won’t even make it to 40.

Go Elizabeth! My Wife’s Struggle Continues

Everyone who reads this, I will keep this short.  My wife Elizabeth was on the news last night and had an interview.  It finally aired and was great, this is a link to the site from Fox 2 Now in St. Louis.  Click on the Fox 2 Now to get to the story.  You should also check out the PBS special, called Science Matters,  The first story is about Elizabeth, Glioblastoma and Novocure, her current treatment.

I wish I could upload the video here and make it easier.  But it is a good story and has a new technology that helps fight cancer.

Please, please take a minute to check out our Go Fund Me page and possibly if you could help us out in our struggle with medical bills and everyday life, since Elizabeth is out of work.  Thank you all for donating and your continued support and hashtag #GoElizabeth on twitter and facebook to show support, thank you again and checkout.  Follow her story on her Go Elizabeth Facebook page, like it! www.gofundme.com/GoElizabeth 

May the 4th Be With You!

Today is Star Wars day, what are you doing today?  Well, I have thought about different things to do today.  Star Wars has always been a big part of my life, I love it very much.  I have seen the films so many times, I could never add the amount of times.  I have read many books, of which are no longer canon of course and when Dark Horse got the rights to the comics, I was full force in on the comics.  If you say my trade paper back collection says is all, I am missing very few.  But, what am I going to do for this special day.  How about explain my failure with Star Wars.