Pat Killingsworth, an Amelia Island man that had incurable bone cancer yet wrote four publications concerning the disease, traveled the country speaking to sustain teams and founded a three-day educational and social event for patients and caregivers, died Thursday on his 60th birthday.
His wife, Pattie, and various other family members were by his adverse at Baptist Medical Center. His cancer joined remission yet he succumbed to complications from treatment, according to family friends.
Monday Mr. Killingsworth wrote of his failing good health in his last short article on his blog, “Living along with Multiple Myeloma.” The short article was titled, “I’m not dead yet!”
“Honestly, I am in very poor shape,” he wrote. Still, also then, he encouraged various other patients. “Feel great and sustain smiling,” he wrote.
Born in Wisconsin, Mr. Killingsworth was a actual estate agent in 2007 once we was diagnosed along with multiple myeloma at age 51. He was told he had no a lot more compared to 5 years to live.
“That’s young for a multiple myeloma patient. No one was looking for it, so I went through a great deal of bone damage prior to my doctors could find out just what was going on,” he told the Times-Union in 2015. “I was devastated. … It took me 5 or 6 months to grab my bearings.”
Mr. Killingsworth joined remission for 3 years, along with the advice of a brand-new oral chemotherapy. After a relapse, he underwent an unsuccessful stem cell transplant, followed by a combination of drugs that helped sustain the illness under control. He said in 2015 that he took a drug that was not also federally approved once he was initial diagnosed.
He went through from intermittent discomfort and adverse effects from chemotherapy. Yet he walked, swam and lifted light weights. And he became among the multiple myeloma community’s “best-known patient voices,” according to The Myeloma Beacon, an online news site for the community where Mr. Killingsworth wrote a freelance column.
“He loved assisting anybody that was touched by multiple myeloma,” said family friend and fellow patient Ed Wolfman. “He traveled extensively … He appeared on several panels, seemingly indefatigable, never ever turning down an opportunity to offer service despite exactly how rotten he felt.
“He didn’t simply tell us to feel great and sustain smiling. He lived it,” Wolfman said. “once individuals told Pat to sluggish down, he laughed and waved it off. He wrote … necessary publications along with crucial insight on exactly how to already know this illness and control the ceaseless treatments. after that he gave his publications away or donated the proceeds to the fight.”
Mr. Killingsworth was under the care of a Mayo Clinic specialist. He and his wife, likewise a cancer survivor, moved to Amelia Island in 2014 from Tampa where he had been treated at the Moffitt Cancer Focus and hosted their initial online myeloma community event. The successor, Pat’s Myeloma Beach Celebration in Fernandina Beach, was a three-day educational and social event for patients and caregivers, featuring seminars, meditation, a 5K walk and a Mambo for Myeloma Dance Challenge.
At the moment of his death, Mr. Killingsworth was preparing this year’s event, which will certainly be April 1-3 at the Woman’s Club of Fernandina Beach. concerning 200 myeloma patients and 50 oncology and drug therapy experts are expected to attend. The newly renamed Pat’s MYeloma Survival School will certainly consist of a memorial service for its founder.
To register or grab a lot more information, visit bit.ly/1TXtWcH.
Beth Reese Cravey: (904) 359-4109
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