Bruce's Journey

I'll start from the beginning. In 2009, my dad was thrown from a truck and had to have spinal surgery. He still struggled with a lot of pain well after surgery. What felt like hundreds of visits to specialists and doctors they finally diagnosed him with a rare genetic disease that attacks his joints. It's called Ankylosing Spondylitis. It's usually diagnosed mostly in men in their late teens-early twenties. They say his accident woke this sleeping giant. There is no cure and he has to be on weekly immunotherapy injections for the rest of his life. If he doesn't take these shots the Dr said he would be in a wheelchair within five years. His joints would completely fuse together rendering him totally immobile. It also makes him very susceptible to infections, colds and basically ANY illness. The major risk to talking these injections is that it increases his chance of getting cancer exponentially. He is in pain EVERYDAY. Simple things like putting on socks are hard for him. As a daughter this is so hard to watch. In the midst of all this my dad went to the ER one night with stomach pain. They ran some blood tests and the Doctor said everything looked fine except his blood sugar. It was 380 and we should really look into it. Long story short there, at 40 he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. More lifetime shots. They say it could have been brought on by the AS attacking his immune system and organs. Oh yes, it's not just joints it goes after. It's your whole body. Fast forward four years to present day.As most of you know my dad had a kidney stone last summer. It hadn't moved but they found a 6cm mass on the opposite kidney. They did another ultrasound to confirm that it was a mass. It was. Next it was a three phase cat scan to determine if it was a solid mass. It was. It has been determined that it is a tumor and not a cyst. They told us we need to get to Rochester asap as it is rapidly growing. The placement of the tumor would not allow laparoscopic surgery. Instead they had to do a open partial nephrectomy and cut him from his rib cage down around his bellybutton. The surgery was extremely invasive as they had to remove all of his internal organs. Afterwards the recovery was extremely long and we're still battling. The tumor came back positive as cancer and 11 lymph nodes also had to be removed. Because of this, he stopped taking his AS medication afraid the cancer would return. After taking most of the winter to recover, this spring he had to have foot surgery which left him immobile for almost 2 months due to complications from diabetes. Just as his foot was healing up and he was able to use it again, he ended up in the doctor with severe surgical hernia's which now requires another evasive surgery to fix the hernia's and his weakened abdominal wall and now requires six more weeks of being immobile.

For most of you that don't know, my dad has his own landscaping business and is normally extremely busy. Because of his health and surgeries, he hasn't been able to work. My dad is the sole bread winner of our family. This has been a huge burden on our family and especially my mom. She hasn't been able to work because she's had to take care of my dad and help with everything. My brother who has always been a huge help moved to Colorado last year to go to a great school. This is not easy and it's making it extremely difficult for my dad to work. We're a very private family and usually don't ask for help. But with no one to work this has taken a huge financial burden on our family. Because of this, my dad took up doing taxidermy to supplement some income. His business took off but because of his AS attacking his hands, eyes and joints it has made it difficult to continue.

My dad and I are so close and this has been extremely sad and hard to watch the STRONGEST man I know go through all of this and still be the goofy, caring, loving, supportive father and husband he is. It's going to be tough on all of us but we're a strong family with an even stronger faith. We got this.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God
Philippians 4:6

God can use our illnesses to bring glory to HimselfAnd we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose
Romans 8:28