Comsewogue Warriors Unite to Help James O'Connor!!

I can't remember how I met Jim, it is as though I always knew him. I can't remember a time when we didn't know each other. Whether it was in Mr. Kaufman's drama class or hanging in the cafe, he was always there with a joke or a caring word. 

Comsewogue Warriors, Jim needs our help now; he is no longer able to work due to multiple myeloma and is currently recovering from pneumonia and a concussion.

I have asked him to share his story with me so that I can share it with you.  Please take a moment to read it in its entirety to understand how this Warrior has an enormous amount of strength to deal with what he has, but now he and his amazing wife, and three beautiful children need our strength. 

Please give what you can, no amount is too small.

"Shooting at the walls of heartache, 
bang, bang,
I am a Warrior
Yes, I am a Warrior and victory is mine"!
______
From Jim

I was diagnosed in August of 2008 with multiple myeloma. I was changing my newborn son at 3 am and suffered a spontaneous compression fracture of my L1 vertebrae because it burst from the tumor growing inside it.

 I was told on my wife's birthday and my son's 2-week old day that, had a fractured spine and a rare form of bone marrow cancer for which there is no cure. After the initial shock and overwhelming sadness, I pulled it together and I told anyone who would listen,  "This, it, I'm not going to die." Then I prayed and I thanked God that it was not my children and not someone who was alone and couldn't handle it. 

It was decided that I would have the surgery to repair my spine immediately and I would go to St Vincent's hospital in NYC where D.r Jagannath (one of the world's best multiple myeloma specialists)gave me lots of his time and we charted a course of action; chemotherapy and at the end of that, a stem cell transplant. 

The chemotherapy was tough: lots of fatigue, nausea and permanent neuropathy in my feet (pins and needles forever). But I saw so many people who had it worse than I did with treatment. I was also dealing with the long recovery of a broken back that I could not rehabilitate in therapy. That pain was worse than anything else for months. 

I had my stem cell transplant on February 2, 2009, and it wasn't perfect. I was not told the process, similar to dialysis for the stem cell transplant, involved a drug that made every single bone in your body hurt for days. I was admitted for the procedure with pneumonia and another surprise, the placement of a port in my chest to deliver the heavy dose of rough chemotherapy so as not to destroy my veins, chemo was oftentimes too much for people (i.e., fatal).  Well we've come this far, I thought, and we plodded ahead.

I had at one time 8 lines running into me and I became wholly dissociated from reality, I thought Danny DeVito was there; I thought I could fly, I constantly took off all my clothes and, to really stress everyone out, I ripped out all my IV lines like a psycho in a movie.

The minute I was sort of normal the only thing anyone would say was,  "Get up, walk, walk, you can't go home until you walk!"  I didn't want to walk and I didn't eat for 19 days but three weeks later I walked out and went home. 

I suffered lots of illnesses as well as endless back and bone pain but was free from medication until 2014. I knew it, I felt it like the bad guy in a scary movie; I knew it before the tests told me. Once again, I was back onto aggressive chemotherapies, trials, and even two treatments at once, which does seem to be doing the trick; I finally found a combination of drugs that worked for me to keep it in check, not remission, likely not ever again. 

I remember the first meeting with Dr. Jagannath and he said, " I will keep you alive for 5 years, and hopefully we will find a cure in that time." At 39 with 3 kids, 5 years didn't sound like a great bargain but I wasn't going to die, remember? Here we are more than 11 years later, no cure but my disease is under control and I'm alive. For every Mel Stottlemyre who lives 20 years, there's an Elie Weisel. Or some of my friends who succumb too quickly. 

I am pretty beat up by the years, the pain, the illness, the falls and concussions, the countless hospitalizations that stress my poor children out, the long term effects of chemotherapy vertigo, short term memory loss, chronic fatigue, and neuropathy. 

However, 11 years into a disease that has an average life expectancy of 5, and I'm still here, still fighting and still grateful. 

I have cancer, and it is hard, but it doesn't have me, not today.