Anne Marie Vale On Cancer, Faith, Hope

Mike Interviews Anne Marie Vale

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “Anne Marie McDonnell Vale is our guest here.  She’s got the book out called Whispers from Above and Reflections from the Heart.  You can find it, as she said, on Amazon.  We only have a little bit of time left.  I just wanted to dabble a little bit in the life that you’ve had since you decided to move to Florida.  You spent what, 48 years of your life single, 50 years?”  Check out today’s transcript for the rest….

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Hello, Anne Marie, how are you?

Anne Marie Vale:  I’m very good, thanks.  How are you doing, Mike?

Mike:  I am well, thank you very much.  How’s the weather in Florida?

Vale:  It’s beautiful.  A little bit cool today, probably in the 60s, but I’ll take that.  It’s great.

Mike:  Tell us about the story and then why you were inspired to write a book.  You are a PhD after all.

Vale:  Well, actually, I was inspired, I really feel the Holy Spirit inspired me to put this together.  It’s snapshots of my life where I basically think of this as a thank you to God for all the blessings he’s given to me.  I also wanted to have this as a fundraiser to find a cure for a very rare non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that I was diagnosed with in April of 2012.  That particular lymphoma is called Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia, which we simply call WM.  Fifty percent of the proceeds from my book sales go to the foundation to help find a cure for this.

Mike:  This is a form of lymphoma, you said?

Vale:  Yes.  If I could briefly describe it, it’s very rare.  Only about 6 out of 1,000,000 people each year are diagnosed with it.  Actually, interestingly, it’s much more common in people 65 or older and Caucasian males.  I happen to be diagnosed as a woman at age 52, so that makes it even more rare.  It was first identified by Dr. Waldenstrom, who’s a Swedish physician, in 1944.  He found that some of his patients had a thickening of the serum or the liquid part of their blood.

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Then he discovered that there was a large amount of macroglobulin.  It’s basically an IgM – it’s something that we need in our blood to help fight infections.  What happens is the white blood cells, the B cells, start to multiply uncontrollably in this WM and produce large amounts of this IgM, which crowd out the red cells and the other white cells and the platelets, which, of course, can cause a number of problems.  The blood becomes very hyper-viscous.  It can’t flow properly through the blood vessels.

Some of us, and I happen to be 25 percent of the people who are very blessed, are basically asymptomatic.  We only find out we have this by going for a regular blood test.  Then it is confirmed through a bone marrow biopsy through the hip.  They take a little bit of your bone marrow and can see right then and there.  It’s similar to multiple myeloma because it is a cancer of the plasma cells, but it’s also a cancer of the lymphocyte.  It’s considered a subtype of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.  I’m very blessed that I’ve continued, other than peripheral neuropathy, which has been my main symptom, I’ve stayed fairly healthy.  Some people have much more than that.  They get very tired and anemic because the red blood cells are lowered.  They may have bruising and nosebleeds and so forth because the platelets are overwhelmed.  Then they get more infections because the white blood cells are overwhelmed.  It can cause a lot of problems, but it’s a low-grade lymphoma.  It’s very slow moving.  It’s not aggressive and it’s very treatable as well through — sometimes people have plasmapheresis if the blood gets too viscous.  They’re able to remove that plasma.  It’s not curable yet.

I looked and said: God has blessed me and continued to give me good health.  Since April 2012, I’m on what they call watch and wait.  I go every six months.  While my IgM level is elevated, it’s not dangerously elevated.  Other than my neuropathy, I’ve remained pretty healthy.  I said: Maybe I can do something to help people, to raise funds to help people who are suffering with these symptoms.  I had enrolled in an expressive writing class in July of 2014.  Both of my parents had passed away within two months of each other, in December 2013 my dad and two months later my mom.  I had devoted most of my life in the five years to watching out for them.  About six months later I went to this writing class and just started pouring out my heart and thinking about my life and all the wonderful things that my parents had taught me.  This past July I started putting together this book, which finally went on Amazon in October.

There’s so much – my mother was told when she was pregnant with me there was no way that she could have a child because she had large fibroid tumors and was really sick.  My parents were really faithful Catholics their whole lives.  They went up to the same inn, actually in the fall of ’57.  I really believe due to St. Anne’s intercession that I’m still here today.  My mother, who was not supposed to live when I was born strong and healthy, lived to be almost 94.  I started thinking about all these things in my life that really have been blessings and miracles.  Rather than focusing on the difficult things, I wanted to show that these are blessings that I’m grateful for and that I’m not defined by this disease.  It’s just something that I deal with.  We all have certain crosses to bear.  I started sharing different snapshots of my life and putting in some poems and photos.  One thing led to another and that’s how it all came about.

Mike:  You say that there’s a treatment for this.  It sounds like such a wide-ranging set of symptoms that you could experience from this disease that there would be several different treatments or several different things that you would have to treat.

Vale:  It can vary greatly from one person to another.  You’re exactly right.  There are certain chemotherapies.  There are also different types of immunotherapies.  By the way, I must say that there is a foundation and it has an excellent website that I would direct people to.  It gives you all this kind of information.  It’s called IWMF.com.  This is another miraculous part of my story.  That stands for International Waldenstrom’s Macroglobulinemia Foundation.  Back in 1994, in Sarasota, there was a retired pharmacist named Arnie Smokler.  He was diagnosed with WM.  It’s such a rare disease he couldn’t find out any information.  He started a little support group which grew and grew.  You can read all about the history at this website.  Now it’s an international foundation with over 8,000 members.  There’s all sorts of support and information for everyone.  There’s an educational forum every year.  This year it’s in June in Providence, Rhode Island.

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What’s so interesting is that I would get this, such a rare disease, especially for a woman in her 50s, and of all the places I could have retired to – I’m from Rhode Island originally – I moved less than five miles away from the international foundation headquarters in Sarasota.  There are so many – I can look at how this neuropathy drives me crazy or look at other things, getting tired sometimes.  Then I say: No, look at all the miraculous things and the things that God has done for me.  I just look at the positive side and share and do what I can to help others.  That’s the route that I’ve chosen instead.

Mike:  It’s a great story.  As a matter of fact, I’m listening to this going – one of our hosts here, Dr. Michael George who does My Story of America, if he’s not listening to this, somebody is probably going to tell him he needs to listen to it.  He’s probably going to want to do an entire show on you because your story is so fascinating.  Anne Marie McDonnell Vale is our guest here.  She’s got the book out called Whispers from Above and Reflections from the Heart.  You can find it, as she said, on Amazon.  We only have a little bit of time left.  I just wanted to dabble a little bit in the life that you’ve had since you decided to move to Florida.  You spent what, 48 years of your life single, 50 years?

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Vale:  Fifty, actually, yes.

Mike:  Wow!

Vale:  Yes.  I met my wonderful husband at a Catholic singles website.  At the time it was called [unintelligible].  I think it has a different domain now.  We actually met when he was still in Plymouth and I was up ion the Providence area.  We met in North Providence, which is where I lived, where we actually met after emails.  Five years later we were married at St. Casimir’s Lithuanian Catholic Church in Providence, where I had played organ for 30-some years.

Mike:  Wait a minute, wait a minute.  They have Catholic Church in Rhode Island now?  When did that happen?  That colony was founded and Catholics were banished from Rhode Island.

Vale:  Actually, I think it was at one time that we had more Catholics per capita than any other state.  There are actually Catholic Churches on just about every corner.  How many truly loyal Catholics there are, I can’t say for sure in today’s world.  I do many wonderful Catholics.

End Mike Church Show Transcript