Just when you think you have everything all planned out . . . life happened

I didn't realize it had been so long since I've last posted, but then again I've had life smack me in the face.

Oh, where do I begin? In the beginning, as the Great Books says. Here we go.



On April 7th, 2011, my wife had a bone marrow biopsy performed at the Altru Hospital in Grand Forks, ND. Afterwards, the doctor said the results could take up to a week to come back. Needless to say, if you've consulted a calendar about now, you know that this would've been on a Thursday. By Friday afternoon, the doctor called and said she wishes to meet with us Monday morning, on the 13th of April.



What led us up to this point? For now, I'm just going to tell it from this point on and not rehash the countless tests and procedures my wife Melissa had gone through before the bone marrow biopsy.


Okay, on Monday morning, the doctor and an entourage of two other nurses come in and inform my wife that she has Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) and that she has to do her treatments in Rochester, MN. Long story short, she has been home two times since then, and is currently residing at the Hope Lodge in Rochester, MN (with her brother as a caretaker). Needless to say, I feel very blessed for all of the support and prayers that have come from the community that I live in, as well as the community I grew up in. The largest town I've lived in was Bemidji, MN, back when I was at the university, but I have to honestly say, you are treated so much more warmly in a smaller community than if we lived in, oh let's say anywhere in the Twin Cities. On May 19th, ironically on my 8-year-old daughter's birthday, there was a benefit held for us at our church in Red Lake Falls. My one wish was that Melissa would've been able to see it, but she was of course down in Rochester. Several hundred people showed up - it was very overwhelming. I feel very blessed by the experience, and can't wait to bless countless others down the road when life throws them a curve ball.


Although I won't go into too much detail about Melissa's treatments and what the future holds, I will do so at a later time. I am still writing, it's something I work on almost every single day, and will add more to this blog very soon.

For updates on my wife's condition, go to the caringbridge.org site and type in melissapeterson1 in the search box.