Ray McMullen Fine Art Photography

When you are lying in a bed without the ability to get up and walk away, it makes you to really face the feelings of hearing the words “you have cancer”. You don’t truly know the seriousness of the situation until you hear the words “you are within hours of expiring” and that everyone is going to do everything possible to give you a fighting chance. I was told that the type of cancer I had, Multiple Myeloma, was not going to be a sprint to the finish, where they could just remove the affected area and work with the chemo drugs. But a marathon, and that I needed to pace myself for a long process of treatments and recovery, and even after all the treatments I would always have the cancer. We would have to control it for the rest of my life with drugs. On top of all the cancer and treatments, I was additionally told that the cancer had taken my kidneys. So not only was a now a cancer patient I was also a dialysis patient. The reality in my mind was, had I gone in as soon...

I had just started a job with Home Depot. So, I was up for anything that would bring me some recognition. We had been having a lot of theft in the store and whenever I could be of assistance I was right there. The one thing that I can’t stand is a thief. One evening I got a call from my store manager. He needed some help and asked for me to give him a hand. This was the opportunity I was looking for. I handed off what I was doing to another associate and went in pursuit of my manager. On the way to catch him I passed a display of pipe wrenches, so I picked one of them up as I was not sure what I was walking into. I caught up to him outside in back of the store. He looked at me and told me to be quiet. We slowly approached the back corner of the store, to find a guy picking merchandise off the ground. His partner had been throwing products over the back fence to him and he was collecting the bounty. My adrenaline started to pump and I was ready for anything. We were re...