Welcome to Dennis Cullip's CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support, prayers, words of hope, and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.
A few weeks ago while enjoying a vacation in Florida, Dennis began to experience pain in his right eye and head. The pain progressed to include blurred vision and sharp pain behind his eye and throughout his head making it difficult to enjoy his vacation and more importantly his favorite beach fishing. On Thursday January 18th, after having visited a quick care clinic and eye doctor with no results, Dennis decided it was time to visit a local emergency room to start looking for a reason behind his pain.
The emergency room in Florida was a wonderful facility that quickly found that his kidneys were in trouble, his levels were four times the acceptable range. They immediately admitted him and proceeded with a CT scan of his head and other tests to try to find the reason behind his pain. The initial results came back on his blood work and pointed towards multiple myeloma or another type of blood cancer. At this point Dennis and Sandy decided it was time to come home to Minnesota to continue testing and treatment.
On Sunday January 21st Dennis was admitted to Mayo Clinic with renal failure and suspected multiple myeloma. The next two days were a multitude of blood tests, MRIs, eye exams, bone marrow biopsy and a kidney biopsy. Throughout Dennis remained in good humor and enjoyed talking with nurses, doctors and other staff.
Finally on Wednesday January 24th the results were in and the journey begins, the final results of the tests show that Dennis is in Stage III of Multiple Myeloma with a related lesions in his brain and gathering of unwanted plasma in his kidneys. The Hematology team assigned to his care decided that he should start his first course of chemotherapy immediately.
A great resource on Multiple Myeloma is:
https://www.themmrf.org/multiple-myeloma/what-is-multiple-myeloma/ 
