I guess I'm a little stubborn, but man this shoulder blade was really taking it's sweet time to heal.  That's what I was thinking after a September 2021 karate injury that just kept giving me pain. I tried to "roll it out" many times and the pain was excruciating! I finally went to physio in January 2022 which lead to an x-ray and CT scan. Guess what Bryan? That pain in your left scapula was due to a broken bone caused by myeloma and, by the way, there are lesions in your humerus, 4 or 5 ribs, vertebrae and pretty much every other large bone in the scan of your upper torso. My second CT scan (the very next day) revealed multiple additional lesions and one goose-egg sized lesion in the neck of my left femur. Nothing like having a radiologist call you directly after hours to instruct you to get to the hospital right away - your leg is about to break! 

Fast forward a few weeks and I had met Dr Visram and the medical team. Surgery on my femur was the first order of business. After the intramedullary rod was placed and I was limping around on crutches I can remember Dr Werier asking when my next Spartan race would be? I liked that, took it as a dare and it drove me to work on my physical rehab.  The summer of 2022 had me through 4 rounds of chemo and a stem cell transplant in September. I met some great people in my clinical trial family, Marc, Jackie, Nicole, Stephen, Malick, Gardia, Suzanne and Ian, and of course Dr Visram, Mai and the nursing staff at the CIU - an excellent support team! Hockey and hiking in the mountains re-started that fall and I ran a 10k the following spring with four additional Spartan races and dragonboat in the summer of 2023! 

I'm very fortunate to say that everything is going well to date with the understanding that you can't take health or life for granted. Take advantage of the time that you have!!

The Grand Rappel provides an opportunity for me to do something unique and raise money for promising myeloma research. If you know me at all you can 100% see me doing this.  So please support me and "Toss Bryan off the Hilton"!!!