Do you ever wonder if you’re getting all you can get out of life? As multiple myeloma patients, this question is both timely and important to our ability to cope with this disease.

As I mentioned in my first column last month ^[1], I am a 51-year-old man who was diagnosed with early-stage multiple myeloma just over two years ago.

My experience was a little atypical in that I didn’t have any bone lesions or other signs of cancer prior to my diagnosis. Instead, I had a recurring and somewhat regular bout of unexplained colitis.

After my family doctor and every internal specialist imaginable had thrown up their hands, I was lucky enough to have a physician as a family friend who encouraged me to continue the hunt. She ordered every imaginable blood test and finally came across the one that sent me to an on­cologist, who eventually uttered those heart dropping words that start with “I’m sorry to have to tell you ...”

How could this be possible?  Other than occasional intestinal problems, I was healthy and strong, the father of two pre-teen boys, and the owner and sole employee of two businesses.

The bottom line was I just didn’t have the time for this problem.

My wife and I owned a freshly planted six-acre fruit tree farm (one of my businesses) in our home town of Waialua, Hawaii. We were also the proud owners of a way-too-big mortgage to pay for our farm. The only way to keep our heads above water was to keep my other business bringing in the bacon, as our farm was a good decade away from producing much money. My wife works full time as an administrator for our local high school, but as any teacher will tell you, her income helped, but it couldn’t come close to covering our large mortgage payment.

It turns out we were hard into the “rat race,” and that was quite a surprise. You see, we always professed to live by the mantra of “Carpe Diem,” or “Seize the Day.” For anybody unfamiliar with the expression, it simply means to live each day as if it were your last.

We came around to this attitude when we quit our careers and the pursuit of the “golden ring” in the mid 90’s, sold everything we owned, and went backpacking around the world for four years.

Upon our return home, we were very surprised to find all of our friends and family still doing the exact same things they had been doing four years before. We vowed never to fall back into this trap. Yet 14 short years later, we had somehow managed to get ourselves right back on that same hamster wheel.

As most of you reading this column can attest, a sure way to take a hard look at your personal hamster wheel is to be told you have a terminal disease.

Like most folks who are diagnosed with multiple myeloma, I first went into shock and immediately started the hard analysis of how I was going to provide for my family.

As a pragmatist, I took the approach that I was going to die from this disease, and that I needed to get myself and my family ready. It didn’t matter that the doctors said I could live for many years; all I heard was the word terminal. Who was going to take care of the farm? How were we going to pay the mortgage?

The answers didn’t come all at once. They didn’t arrive with a bolt of lightning. They took time and lots of talk with my wife, friends, and family.

For me, the hardest part was finding out how far I had gotten us back into the chase for the golden ring. We had the best of intentions. You see, housing in Hawaii is very expensive, and most parents here worry about how their children will be able to afford to live here.

My wife and I figured that our beautiful farm would provide home sites for both our boys when they were ready. All we had to do was hang on for about 15 years, and they could take over the mortgage.

Fifteen YEARS!!! I still can’t believe I said that!

Of course, these would be 15 years where my boys would grow from 11 to 26 years old, where paying that obscene mortgage would come before vacations, travel, hobbies, and college. Fifteen more years of working a job I was already growing bored with. Fifteen more years of putting the damn house before everything else in our lives.

Multiple myeloma changed all that.

Faced with the possibility that I wouldn’t be able to work in the near future, we made the VERY painful deci­sion to sell our beloved farm. We moved to a small lot in a nearby community where we are in the process of building a much smaller and simpler house.

While building the house, we have been living on the lot in a trailer (same thing we did when we built the farmhouse and vowed not to do ever again!). It’s not horribly comfortable, but we are managing just fine.

The big change, though, is that without a huge mortgage payment to make, I don’t have to worry as much about my business or our money.

While our new place won’t be as nice as our old one, we are actually much happier with a lot less to take care of. Our boys won’t be able to build large family homes on this property, but we will still have room for them if they want. Somehow, they will have to make it on their own; just like their mom and me!

Most importantly, I am now able to spend more time with my boys dirt biking, hunting, surfing, and fishing, and less time working on the farm’s perpetually leaking irrigation system and explosive weeds. Instead of giving our money to the bank, we took a family trip to Alaska. For us this is truly Carpe Diem!

Just making the decision to lighten our burden (before we actually sold the place) noticeably helped my health.

The effect of stress on our ability to heal is very real. As I started chemotherapy, the knowledge that I was off my hamster wheel helped me immensely to relax and accept what was happening to me physically.

Carpe diem is not easy to live by in our society, where achievement is measured in material items rather than personal happiness.

I encourage you to evaluate your life to see if you can slow down your personal hamster wheel. They come in all shapes — not all of them are financial. Just evaluate your week and see if your energy is going towards making you happy. If not, make the changes now — not later. Our days are all numbered; some of us just know where we are in line.

Life is precious and short; use what you have left to make yourself and those around you happy!

Aloha and good healing!