Miguel Velazquez Verdecias Miguel Velazquez (CR, MN)

Welcome to our CaringBridge site. We've created it to keep friends and family updated. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement during this time when it matters most. Miguel was having arm pain in the fall, he was feeling really fatigued and lost quite a bit of weight. On January 11th, without falling or anything, Miguel's right arm broke. Later we found out he has a rare form of Multiple Myeloma (a blood cancer that takes the calcium from the bones). After many tests and lots of blood and a bone marrow biopsy, it was concluded that he has stage 3 Multiple Myeloma cancer and lesions throughout his body.  He is doing 4 rounds of chemotherapy, and then he will be going to the Mayo clinic in Rochester for a 6 week stem cell transplant to try to put him in remission for the time being. There is a 1-5% chance of not making it through the transplant due to complications. Once in remission, it will be 1-5 years before the cancer comes back. They will collect extra stem cells from him the first time, as a second transplant may be needed.