Bruce Clark Bruce's Medical Journey

Thank you for visiting and welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support, prayers and words of hope and encouragement so far. 

We thought we would take a moment to bring everyone up to speed on what has brought us to this point and then going forward, we will provide "journal entry" updates as we have any new news to share.  These updates may come from me (Tiffany), my dad, Christy or Judy depending on the situation. 

As many of you know, my dad has been struggling since his hip replacement surgery (early February 2021) with persistent lower back pain.  After a series of follow up appointments with Dr's and Physical Therapist's he was finally able to determine thru an MRI a 4 inch tumor up against (and growing into) his pelvic and tailbone caused by "cancer of his plasma cells".  He has since been in the care of the Compass Oncology's team and started radiation on August 19th and will continue this for 5 weeks (or 25 sessions).  These are very short and targeted treatments with the goal to shrink the tumor to minimize pain and continued degradation of the bone.    Anyone who has been affected by cancer (either yourself of loved one) you know that it is never "set and forget" or "one and done"...it is a journey.  Our journey pivoted this week after the results from  blood draws, bone biopsy's and PET scans were shared.  As of right now, August 26, 2021, the official diagnosis is Stage 2 Multiple Myeloma.    The treatment will be 5 weeks of radiation (targeted end date of Sept 22nd) , meet with a Dr that will determine if he is eligible for a stem cell transplant (Sept 1st),  start 12-16 wks of chemotherapy after radiation and then if eligible...there would be the stem cell transplant after chemo is completed (early 2022).  We have a long journey ahead of us as we take each day at a time as he experiences any side affects from the treatments.  Step 1 and the focus is to address the tumor.  

Everyone that is receiving this is someone that means a great deal to our family and you all know how important friends and family are to my dad.  Your support has uplifted his spirits countless times already.  He is a man of great faith and says "it is what it is and we just need to address it".  Again, thank you in advance for your continued support, prayers and acts of kindness.  

Please feel free to communicate directly with the family in the comment section available here or to email my dad directly (if you don't have his email address you can let us know here). 

Bruce and Judy Clark
Tiffany, Jeff, Jillian and Sadie Pratt
Christy, Don, Clark and Nathan Wright