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A Journey through AML

A Journey through AML May 5th, 2024 Thus concludes a strange week. On Sunday last, while feeling quite well due to the previous Friday’s blood transfusion, I encountered an experience completely foreign to me. In fact, it was so different from anything I had previously experienced, that I had difficulty describing it. It was a little bit like the feeling of standing up too quickly, a consequence of a sudden lowering of the blood pressure, but it was not quite like that. I wasn’t dizzy, nor did I feel faint, or pass out, which I had twice some years ago. But it was a powerful feeling that began somewhere in my mid-body, radiating out to my torso, then up through my head, and out to my shoulders. Oddly enough, it didn’t include my arms or legs. My mind remained clear, as though I were an observer rather than a participant. It lasted, by my estimate, about 30 seconds, a long time for such an experience. Afterward, I felt fine, with no lasting effects. I had no idea of what the cause mig...
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Chapter 4: Looking Death in the Eyes in Georgia

Chapter 4:  Looking Death in the Eyes in Georgia Standing in the doorway of the mom-and-pop motel, was a huge man with a tire tool, a lethal length of iron, and he was about to use it to try and take my life. In the mid-seventies, I was a photographer for Chromalloy Photographic, a firm that employed photographers to travel the country taking high-quality portraits for commercial firms. I was, by that time, a supervisor/trainer, and attended a meeting in Galveston, Texas. But I needed to be in Sheffield, Alabama the next day. My car was in Atlanta, Georgia where I left it before flying to Galveston, so I had to fly back to Atlanta before leaving for Sheffield.  I didn’t get to Atlanta until about 11:00 that evening, and the airport is south of Atlanta, so it was past midnight when I left north Atlanta and motored into Cobb County, Georgia. At about 1:30 in the morning, I was so sleepy, that I decided to stop at the first motel I came to and catch a couple hours of sleep. ...
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Chapter 3  Facing my Apparent Demise In the mid 1960s, I was an investigator for a company that provided information of any sort requested by commercial customers, insurance companies, employers and the like. It was a fascinating employ. I did surveillance work for insurance companies, investigated the accuracy of insurance claims, and once even investigated a murder – not to solve it, but to confirm it was a homicide and not an accident, as a homicide carried a double indemnity payout.  My wildest investigation began very straightforward and simple: provide information on a fleet of trucks owned by a chrome plating business in the worst part of East St. Louis. They wanted me to report a fairly long list of information, the number of vehicles, how they were used, who drove them, their condition, and more. I arrived at the business and asked to see the owner. When he appeared, I told him that I was there to confirm information regarding the vehicles used in his business. The ...
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Chapter 2 Motorcycle Miracle January 27, 2024 I was a short, skinny kid. In fact, when I entered my sophomore year in high school, I was 4’10” tall and weighed 86 pounds. I was the only kid in school who could eat his lunch in his locker – with the door closed! By the time I was 20 years old, I had grown to 5’7” and weighed a whopping 105 pounds. Perhaps that was the reason I loved the powerful image of the motorcycle, all power, speed and sound. I had a 1966 BSA Super Rocket motorcycle. It was candy-apple red and chrome, and produced a deep, powerful sound. I loved that bike. It was fast, too, for the time. And I tended to twist the right grip hard a lot. One sunny motorcycle riding perfect day, I pulled up to a stop light on Airline Drive at Center Street in Rosewood Heights, Illinois. Now, at this light, the two lane road expanded into four lanes for a short distance leading up to and past the light. Several cars were stopped at the light waiting for it to turn green, so I, being a ...
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Prequel: A Miracle I Do Not Remember   January 22, 2024 It is truly astounding to remember my parents telling me about this experience. I have no memory of this. I only have the memory of my parents telling me about it.  My father worked as a machinist at a refinery for many years. Refineries are dangerous places. I don’t know if this is still true, but at that time, if one looked directly at an arc welder, it could flash and cause a serious burn in the eyes. This happened to my father. It was incredibly painful, and there was, in those days, nothing that could be done for it. The condition usually lasted for about 24 hours.  My father couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t do anything but walk the floor, and sit in pain. I was about three years old at the time. I asked my mother,  “‘What is wrong with daddy?” She told me his eyes hurt really bad. (My mother told me that) I replied, “Don’t worry, Daddy; God will make it stop.” I placed my little hands on his e...
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Chapter 1  January 14, 2024 I have faced what seemed like certain death, or, at least, a very likely demise several times during my 82 years. The interesting part of this is that in each and every case, I felt no fear, no apprehension, no “fight or flight” response. I think that one of the reasons for this comes from a good many powerful experiences that I believe to be of a spiritual nature throughout my life. I have shared some of these experiences with some of you, and some of you have asked me if I had written them down, the last query just two days ago. I thought about that, and decided there would be no better time to do that than right now. Here then, is the first telling of my experiences that have powerfully shaped my life. Awakening under the Milky Way My first spiritual experience was one that I would call a spiritual awakening.  I was eight years old.   I lived in Rosewood Heights, an unincorporated area of Southern Illinois that was more country than urban. T...
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