How it all began...

December 2008- Capao da Canoa- Brazil

Family was on vacation as we do every year for new years. Brazil such a beautiful and wonderful place to be. Beach, caipirinhas, party, family, friends, etc... except this year it wasn't the same. My father Philipp ended the year with extreme amounts of back pain....There was no champagne for new years... there was no walking to the beach to watch fireworks...

January 2009- Brazil

1st I left to go on vacation with my fiancees family. I said goodbye to my dad with a bad feeling and a knot in my heart...we cried and said farewell for the time being. Three days went by and I called to discover that my dad was in such terrible pain, he hasn't gotten out of bed in 3 days. 2 days later he was sent to the ER by ambulance to the big city- 1 1/2 hrs away.

Met with a spinal specialist who gave him injections in the spine, thinking it was nothing more then inflamed discs in his spine. Gave him pain medicine and sent him on his way back to the beach.

2 days had passed I was now back in Virginia, where I live, and my dad was in really bad shape- He was still in Brazil. Ambulance came once more to take him to the hospital. At Santa Casa Hospital he was giving more steroids and pain medications.... he was getting worse by the minute... until a family's friend doctor came in and said i would like to see the MRI. There it was.... he was sent to a different hospital right away... a group of doctors started doing extensive work on him and immediately started to give him medication.... On the same day the doctor told my mom that his kidneys were only 20% functioning and that if he hadn't come to the hospital that same night he wouldn't have made it alive...

After that shock a couple days passed in the hospital and doctors were still running additional exams. Me, my brother, and my sister were all in Virginia... my mom was there with a friend named Jaque(she was a guardian angel that came to us at the right time... she arranged everything at the new hospital and she was there for my mom when we couldn't be)and with my
dad. We then received a phone call from my mom a day later letting us know my dad was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma... Stage 3.

Our reaction? speechless.... heartbroken.... it was a stab in our hearts... We were thousands of miles away and we couldn't even hug our dad, comfort our mom... PAIN...deep pain...

****So what now???