Inspirational Stories

My story starts like everyone else’s. I was living my life, working every day, and coming home to my four children and my wife. But my wife and I started to notice how tired I was becoming. I would always sleep. I could just be waking up, and by the time I got ready for work, I was passing out in my chair. When I got a lunch break, I would sleep in my truck. I would always feel like I couldn’t get enough to drink; I was always thirsty. I barely ate anything, and I was getting fevers and the shakes. I could be hot and sweating, but I would be cold and shaking if that makes any sense. So, one day, I took my wife to her driver’s test, and when I got out of the car and was standing on my feet, I totally collapsed to the ground. I will never forget that day and the look my wife had on her face. She was scared, and so was I, even though I passed out for only a minute or two. We knew something was wrong. We came home, and I laid down on the couch for a while, but then my wife drove me to St. Agne’s so I could get checked out. By the time the doctors figured out what was wrong with me, I was sleeping again in the hospital bed. When the doctor came in, he said, “Mr. Walko, you have cancer.” He said it with no remorse, no sympathy, just right to the point as cruel as I ever heard a doctor be. I just started bawling my eyes out nonstop. While I was calling my wife to let her know what was going on, I asked the doctor if I was going to die. He just looked at me and said people my age normally don’t survive cancer. He told me I was being transferred to another hospital that was more capable of treating me. 

So, for a long time, I was in the hospital. It felt like years and years, but the most time I spent there was one to two years. While I was in the hospital, I lost weight. I was 445 pounds going in and came out at 325 pounds. I was given chemotherapy, had multiple spinal taps done, and pieces of bone removed from my lower back. I even noticed that my hair was falling out. I started to go into a depressed state of mind while I was dealing with cancer. I also had to deal with my kids’ mother keeping my kids from me until I had to go back to court and fight her to have my kids back. So, yeah, I was falling really fast into a depressive state of mind. I felt like I was giving up, that maybe it would be better if I let the cancer kill me and not fight to stay alive. But this one day, I will never forget, my wife came to see me, and she had this look in her eyes. She laid down in bed with me, and as I was holding her, she fell asleep in my arms. I looked at her, and I was thinking about my children, and this sense of pride and the feeling that I couldn’t give up started to overcome me. 

The next day, a friend came to see me, and he brought hair clippers, and he shaved my head bald, I mean completely bald. I said to myself, if I am going to lose my hair, I might as well cut it off myself. I quickly snapped myself out of depression, and I started to fight for my life. I was not ready to say goodbye to my wife, kids, and family, so every day, I did what I needed to do to get better. I would walk the floors. I would take the elevators down to the parking lot, or I would walk to the lobby, and go out front to get fresh air. After a while of fighting to beat the cancer, I was able to go home. I was sent home and continued to get checkups and all that good stuff. Finally, the day came when my doctor told me, “Congratulations, you are now in remission.” I could not believe I beat cancer. I started crying and called my wife to tell her the good news and all my friends and family. 

I am still not at my best, but I will get back to being how I was. My back hurts when I walk too much because of all the spinal taps and the pieces of bone they removed from my lower back, but I find myself doing more and more every day. Don’t get me wrong, I still get depressed when I sit back and think about acute myeloid leukemia (AML), all the things I went through, and how it could have turned out if I had given up. But I can’t let that stop me from raising my kids and living my best life. I just now take life more seriously than I did before, and I take nothing for granted.