August 17 A review of events as they have occurred

On March 23, while playing golf with my brother Mac and George Powell (and playing well, I might add) Jimmy had a sudden stabbing pain in his back. Thinking he had either pulled a muscle, or at worst ruptured a disc, he tried all of the usual remedies for three weeks. When the intense pain did not lessen, he went for a MRI, which revealed a compression fracture: the T12 vertebra had collapsed. While doing the MRI the technician turned to me in surprise and asked "Has your husband been in an automobile accident? His back is broken!"

When multiple myeloma was diagnosed, we didn't even know what it was. We were to learn that it is a cancer of the bone marrow. We were in complete shock; Jimmy has always been so healthy.

We went to Shands where a bone marrow biopsy confirmed the diagnosis. Wanting to explore our options, we decided to go to Emory for a second opinion. Jamey helped me get him to Atlanta where we intended to stay for one night and come home the next day. We met with the doctors, but by the end of the day, Jimmy was in such excruciating pain that they admitted him to the hospital where we stayed for three weeks. It was a nightmare. Jimmy mercifully doesn't remember a lot of it, and some of it is a blur for me too. We later learned that his back had broken in two more places, L1 and L3.

Finally, Jimmy had improved enough for us to leave the hospital, but he was still in very bad shape, could not travel, and we HAD to begin treatment for the myeloma. The Ritz Carlton in Buckhead agreed to move a hospital bed into one room and set a connecting room up as a sitting room. We stayed there for a month, and the staff was wonderful. Jimmy's back improved steadily, and we were spending a lot of time going back and forth to Emory for the cancer treatments, and we decided that it was time to graduate to an apartment. Jamey found us a corporate apartment at the Gables on East Rock Springs Road, five minutes from the hospital, and it has worked out very well.