Help Joshua and Family Through Medical Crisis

Hi, I’m Joshua Werlein. I’m 40 years old with five wonderful children, three of whom are in the picture. I love the outdoors, riding 4-wheelers, fishing, and doing anything I can with my kids. I have a great career and have traveled everywhere a guy could wish to. I worked in the oil field and kept my knowledge as a heavy equipment operator to continue my career when I moved back home to MN. I have a great, loving wife, Tiffany, and the best, loving mother of my kids. So much has changed in our lives overnight, it seems. Over the last 2 years, I’ve been seen at U of M outpatient. No worries really, but I ended up at Mayo in Rochester, MN, which was okay. But I was at work one night and I got a phone call: we found something in your blood. That’s okay, I didn’t think anything of it, but I had to get back to Mayo right away. I found myself in hematology, waiting to be seen, to find out I have Kappa IGA MGUS myeloma amyloidosis. In the meantime, I also found out I was getting very sick from a medication the doctors had been prescribing me. I had to stop that med right away. Plus, I already have a prior injury from the oilfield to my lumbar and thoracic spine, where I kinda had to rewalk again. But after several years, I was finally able to get back to work only ten years ago from that injury. So now I find out I’m sick, but that’s okay, I don’t really feel sick. But then I get out of my machine and I could not walk. This was four months ago. I barely made it home for my wife to help me several times as I fell everywhere. The pain started at a 15 level. I didn’t know what was happening to me, so I had no choice but to go on short-term disability through my union and my great employer at Bell Lumber. I then stopped the med, only to have what seemed like three strokes. I lost my vision, became sensitive to light, and still had severe pain and swelling, weakness, just all sorts of things. The pill gave me Parkinsonism and I almost died. I was outside with my boy just trying to make it because I never knew when I was going to pass. In my mind, I would go to bed not knowing if I’d wake up or not. But my shaking did go away after two months of stopping the med. So I made it through that, me, my wife, and son, the most horrible, scariest thing ever. So now we’re really not sure why some things are still happening to me at the moment. But my myeloma and my injury and the recovery from the Parkinsonism, and the doctors are still working, so to speak. But now, in the last month, I was kinda getting better managed by meds, which I don’t like at all. But then I started feeling like I’m being broken in half, my spine waking up screaming at night, only getting two to four hours of sleep from the pain in my spine, hips, legs, feet, ankles, my arms, neck, face, back, and chest. It never stops. Any pressure on my skin indents to my bone. My socks go to my bone. My skin swells up everywhere. It gets so hard to walk. I’m losing muscle function and experiencing severe weakness. When I get pain in my eye sockets, my jaw, or temple, I get disorientation and confusion. One weird thing, my forehead gets very cold when it happens. I sweat severely bad in my sleep when I get my couple of hours. It’s hard to eat anymore. It’s hard to swallow. I choke. The food makes me sick. I get cut very easily and have red dots on my feet that I keep asking about with no answer. As my doctors, my cancer doctors, say they’re building a chart to try to figure out what my body is doing to see how to approach things as I continue to get sicker. You see, my bone pain doesn’t stop, the marrow pushing on my bones causing pain and swelling, and my neck swelling to my head and the pain in my face, yeah, just everything. I have made it through some very crazy stuff with my family, for my kids and wife to watch me at times wondering if I’m going to make it or not, as I fight on and don’t give up one bit. So right now, four months later from when all of a sudden I couldn’t walk, I still can’t go back to work, and every day, I’m still getting worse. It seems it never stops. I only wish it would, and me and my family would have gotten our lives back to normal. It doesn’t make sense how our lives can change so quick with no warning at all, and no hope that things will go back to normal for our family. I won’t lose hope or my faith. I believe there is a plan for me in life, and what’s going to happen will happen through my Lord. Am I scared? A little, who wouldn’t be? But I have my faith and trust in my God. So I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, but I have my kids and wife and a wonderful support system through friendship I call family. I’m asking for a little help and support for bills that don’t stop, like my mortgage and other bills, as well as everyday living and medical travel expenses that won’t stop. My cancer doctor is my new best friend, and I am invited to start learning as much as I can about multiple myeloma, like seminars and travel with doctors. I’m really hoping I don’t have to fight for my life, but it seems no matter what I do, it’s going to happen. But I’ll have my best friend Tiffany Werlein by my side and my new friend for life, my cancer doctor, which I thought was funny when we talked to her and this was said. There is no telling what life is going to bring our way at this time, but I do still have hope that I’m going to get better and this nightmare is going to be over. So please, if you can’t donate, send prayers to our family. Thanks, everyone.