About Josh

Planet Insurance

Josh's Light the Night Fundraiser

My name is Josh Carpenter and I was diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia in the fall of 2001 at the age of 25. In March of 2002 I underwent an allogeneic stem cell transplant. My mother flew to Denver from Columbus, OH when I was released from the hospital to be my caregiver after transplant.

While I have been lucky enough to be in remission since the transplant this has not been the easiest of roads. In the months following my transplant I dealt with a myriad of side effects due to graft vs. host disease which included things like skin rashes, bowel problems, lack of energy, blood clots, an enflamed liver, chronic dry eyes, and corneal abrasions just to name a few. My mother had put her life on hold in order to come to Colorado and take care of me.

After several months of doing nothing but taking care of me she had overstayed her return trip ticket and didn’t have enough money to get back home. This is what initially prompted us to contact the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

At that time they had a reimbursement program for travel expenses which provided my mother with enough money to purchase a ticket home. When we contacted the society the patient services coordinator Lynn Calloway also told us about a support group which the society hosted every month. I began attending that group which soon became an invaluable part of my life.

In September of 2002, I participated in my first Light the Night Walk. At that time I was still physically too weak to actually walk that far but I had a strong team of supporters who walked on my behalf. It was one of the greatest experiences to see everyone there supporting the cause of fighting these diseases. That night had me hooked on the event and I have participated every year since.

Unfortunately my physical progress did not improve in the months that followed that initial walk. In fact quite the opposite happened. The normal immunosuppressing medications were not sufficient to suppress my graft vs. host disease so I was taking high doses of prednisone to suppress the GVHD.

Due to a side effect of the steroids I became diabetic and was diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy which is a disabling nerve disorder. In late February of 2003 I collapsed at my apartment and had to be taken by ambulance and admitted to the hospital.

After a few days I was doing fairly well and was all set to go home the next day, that is until I spiked a fever. I was given an antibiotic called Vancomycin which it turned out I was allergic to.

I had an extremely severe reaction known as Stevens-Johnson Syndrome. My skin turned bright red as if I had a sunburn and my fever worsened which made me delirious for a couple of days. When I finally regained my senses my neuropathy was so advanced I was unable to move my feet and was so weak I literally could not roll over in bed.

I spent the next 3 & 1/2 months in the hospital. I was confined to either bed or a wheelchair and through physical and occupational therapy I was learning how to do everything again.

After I was discharged from the hospital I was still unable to care for myself and at the ripe old age of 27 had to live in a nursing home. I continued my therapy there with the ultimate goal of moving back home.

While I was staying there one of our support group facilitators, Martie Steinfeld, (who also happened to be one of the nurses who took care of me in the hospital) used to come and pick me up and take me to the support group and then back to the nursing home after the meeting was over.

Being able to attend these meetings meant so much for my emotional well being at that time. It gave me something to look forward to each month as well as got me out of the nursing home one night a month.

Eventually after nearly 10 months of staying in the nursing home I was physically able to get to a point where I could go back home again. I still was unable to feel or move my feet, but I had orthotic braces which allowed me to walk on a limited basis.

My brother Ben moved out here from Ohio and became my primary caregiver. It wasn’t easy for him but he came through for me when I needed him the most. I was still using the wheelchair 95% of the time and I could be a handful to deal with.

For a few months after my discharge from the nursing home I received physical and occupational therapy on a home based program, however after a period of time I was no longer eligible for home care therapy and my progress regressed.

The BMT clinic at Rocky Mountain Cancer Center referred me to a new cancer rehabilitation center called Navitas, at that time they had yet to become accredited with Medicare, which is the health insurance plan I am enrolled in, so I was unable to attend therapy there at that time.

Later on down the road however fortune smiled on me. At one of our monthly support group meetings in early 2005 the director of Navitas, Barb Francis, did a presentation about their center and the benefits of exercise in cancer patients. We spoke after her presentation and I told her about my situation.

One of the best things that has ever happened in my life occurred that night. Barb agreed to get me into their program for the price of what my co-pay would have been until they were accredited with Medicare. Were it not for Barb and the other wonderful folks at Navitas I don’t know how things would have turned out for me.

Now you may have noticed earlier in this story I said that I have participated in the walk every year since 2002. Although I participated I was never able to physically walk until 2005. Someone had to push me the entire way in my wheelchair.

By the fall of 2005 when the walk came around I had experienced some significant progress in my work with Navitas. I was still pushed in my wheelchair the majority of the way but I was able to walk the last couple hundred feet with the aid of my walker. It was a great experience and I made up my mind right then and there that the next year I would walk the entire distance.

I knew this would be a daunting task and I went to my therapists at Navitas and told them what my goal was. Together we worked out an exercise regimen designed to get me strong enough to complete the walk. It was not an easy process but after many hours of physical therapy I believed I could rise to the challenge I had laid out for myself.

The 2006 walk was one of the accomplishments in my life I am most proud of. We had an amazing team assembled and I am so thankful for everyone who was there rooting me on. The walk around Washington Park in Denver is over 2 miles long. It’s strange how often things in life turn out very differently than you expect them to.

If someone had told me at the when I was 24 that I would be celebrating a “walk in the park” as a significant achievement in my life I would have laughed in their face. It took me nearly 2 hours and almost everyone had gone home with the exception of our team and the workers tearing everything down.

They were actually waiting for me to finish so they could start taking down the start/finish line. But I crossed the finish line and our team celebrated as if we had just won the Super Bowl.

I have finished the walk every year since and will continue to finish as long as I’m physically able to do so. This year will be my 23rd year participating and 18th year completing the walk. Please make any donation you are able to in support of this very worthy cause.