the year since

                It was the worst I have ever felt.  We had just basically learned that my dad would eventually die from cancer, and my sister ha disappeared. I was scared and hurt. I mean after all I was only fourteen and I was stuck there trying to comfort my mom when really all I wanted to do was go sit in a corner and cry. My sister later apologized for just leaving me with my mom. My dad came home the Sunday after his Friday surgery which was pretty amazing, he even watched the Colts play the Rams with me after we got home even though he was really tired.

                This was over a year ago, and since then my dad had been hospitalized with blood clots, been doing continual intravenous chemotherapy treatments, had two separate cataract surgeries, and he is still doing pretty well, even with everything that he has gone through over the last few years. Chemo still barely affects him, pretty much all it does is make him tired, which still amazes me after all the horror stories I have heard about chemo.

                Since the surgery my dad has done extremely well and after every MRI, which my dad still has every three months, we still hold our breath, and my dad has been declared “stable” every time since the surgery. My dad has fought through the one of the most deadly type of cancers out there with his Glioblastoma that he had back in2003 and a type of cancer that will probably claim his life that should have been a cakewalk after the Glioblastoma. He is my hero because he made a promise to us all when he first got sick and so far he had held true to that promise, that cancer would not beat him, like it did my grandpa and so many other people before and since then.

                Since my dad was first diagnosed most of the people my dad first underwent treatments with at Hux cancer center in Terre Haute have passed. It is pretty scary and pretty amazing at the same time when you have a doctor tell you your dad should not be here, I have heard this a billion times. My dad is a true miracle.

                My dad’s not the only person I’m close to that has been diagnosed with cancer, but he is definitely the one person who has had the biggest effect on my life, I love the fact that even through all the crazy, horrible crap that has happened my dad had still managed to always be there for me and help my mom run our small business.

feelings after the surgery

We had just basically learned that my dad’s life would more than likely be claimed by a cancerous brain tumor, and honestly I was more terrified than I had been throughout the whole ordeal, and that’s saying quite a bit considering we had been going through for so long with so many different “scares”.  This was when I probably needed my sister and mom the most. Like I said earlier in my blog, my mom and I are not really that close, but I was really needing her to keep her cool and be there for me, because I didn’t think I could handle losing my dad without some kind of support. I wanted her to stay strong, but she completely lost, and can you really blame her? She had just learned that her husband of thirty-two years would eventually pass from a brain tumor. While I sat there with my mom and aunt trying to comfort my mom, while choking back tears of my own, my sister disappeared. I had no idea where she went, but this is honestly, when I needed her the most and I couldn’t find her any where. To this day I still haven’t told anybody this, but at that point in time, I had never felt lonelier, I couldn’t believe my sister had pretty much deserted me  in that hospital. It sucked. After my dad, my sister was probably the person I was closest to in my family. She had been there for me through pretty much all of this. This was really tough for all of us, but I was there for my mom, and I was doing a lot better than she was controlling her feelings. My sister had disappeared and was letting me down more than anybody ever had , she was the last person I had ever expected to just disappear.

The Day of the Third (cont.)

My dad’s surgery was supposed to be about 4 to 6 hours long, but in reality it was close to 8 hours long, those were the longest eight hours of my life. It was horrible! The nurse that came in to tell else that my dad was out of surgery also told us that Dr. Miller, my dad’s surgeon, would be out shortly to speak to us.

                After the nurse left the room we sat in that awkward waiting room for what seemed like forever, but it was actually only about twenty minutes. That was the shortest wait we had had all day, but it seemed like the longest wait. Dr. Miller finally came into the waiting room and asked us to follow him into this tiny room that contained only a couch and table with a box of Kleenexes on it. He stood in front of us and informed us that they were not able to get the entire tumor but they were able to get most of the tumor, and that the reason the surgery had taken so much longer than anticipated was that the tumor was actually larger than they had previously thought and went down into his brain had breached my dad’s brain’s blood barrier. This all sounded pretty scary, but at the time I had no idea what it all meant, but I was too nervous and scared to ask the doctor so after he left the room I began to ask my mom all the questions I had, but she at this point she began to cry, so I could tell it wasn’t good news we had gotten and by the time my mom started crying, my sister had already left the room. My mom and I aren’t exactly close, I’ll always go to my dad or sister for anything, before I go to my mom, she tends to blow things out of proportion and I very negative, so I really needed my sister, but I couldn’t find her. She was really close to my dad as am I but she was taking the news we had just received a little bit harder than I was. I didn’t fully understand what was going on and my aunt Lori and I were having a really tough time comforting my mom. My aunt was also having a tough time with the news we received because even though she hadn’t been real close to my dad in recent years she could still remember how nice he was to her when my dad and mom were dating. He would invite my aunt to movies with them and she could still remember seeing “Jaws” with them almost thirty years earlier.

                We were all affected by the news about my dad’s surgery, but we were still happy about them getting most of the tumor, I think looking back we couldn’t have gotten worse news, but at the same time I do not think we could have gotten better news about how the surgery went.

               

The Day of the Third Surgery (cont.)

                My mom, my sister, and I were all just sitting in the hospital waiting for any news about my dad, when my aunt Lori came in to the waiting room where we were sitting awkwardly with the families of other patients at the hospital. The room we were in was not really small, but under the circumstances it seemed like the smallest room I had ever been in. My aunt came in with some magazines for my sister and mom to read while we waited, and she brought me in the most current issue of “Sports Illustrated”, which just happened to be my favorite magazine. She also brought in some candy for us to eat while we waited for some kind of news about what was going on with my dad. At the time these things seemed like just small gestures, that really didn’t affect how things were, but looking back now, these small gestures really affected how things went for us. I can’t really speak for my mom and sister, but I know everything my aunt did that day really helped me. The candy and magazines helped me feel more comfortable, and helped make that somewhat cramped hospital waiting room feel more like home.

                After several hours with absolutely no news about what was going on in the operating room my dad was in a nurse finally came out and told us that he was doing okay and they were about half way through what ended up being close to an eight hour surgery. We were all greatly relieved by this news and at this point we all decided to go to the hospital cafeteria and eat a lunch that for me consisted of a slice of pepperoni pizza and some French fries, it was the first thing I had eaten all day besides a few Reese’s Peanut Butter, and it was great. It’s weird when you’re extremely worried about something how something as simple as getting something substantial to eat can make you feel so much better.

                After we ate we went back to the semi-cramped waiting room and waited for some more news on my dad, which didn’t some until several hours later. While we waited for some news I worked on homework and my mom, sister, and aunt all read the magazines my aunt had brought.

                After I finished my homework my sister and I went outside to make some phone calls and just let everyone at home no how things were going. My sister called my grandparents and out minister, Shane, while I called my uncle Mike, my mom’s brother, and my uncle Tom, my dad’s brother. We told all of them that they hadn’t given anymore news, but last we knew my dad was doing well and they should be done fairly soon.

                A couple more hours passed and finally the same nurse who had talked to us earlier came in to the waiting room we were in and told that my dad was finally out of surgery.

The Day of the Third Surgery

                The days after my dad was diagnosed with brain cancer for the third time, we were all very worried. As I imagine every family would be, but we were even more concerned than I think other families would be. We were more concerned because we had been through it all not just once before, but twice before. While that is true, we were more prepared than most would have been, but we were also extremely worried about what could happen, especially since brain surgery is extremely stressful on your body, and my father had been through two such surgeries in just over five years.

                We were all pretty worried, but I think for the first time my dad was actually more worries than the rest of us. My dad was extremely worried, but he really tried to remain positive. He said he knew he would come out of the surgery and recover like he had every time before, he knew he would get better again.

                The morning of the surgery we went to IUPUI teaching hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana, the same place my dad had had his previous, most recent brain surgery that had been under four months earlier in June 2009. When we went into the hospital we first found what floor the doctor’s office was on, so he could get checked in to complete the last few things that had to be completed before he could have his surgery. My dad changed into a hospital gown, while my mom filled out some paperwork. As my mom completed the paperwork it became close to the time for my dad to go into surgery so we went into a little room as a family and they told us this room would be his last stop before surgery, so if we had anything to say we should say it now. At this point we all, my mom, my sister, and I, all said what could be our last goodbyes. We didn’t know what this would be, and I think that was the scariest thing for all of us. I was fine until, my dad with tears in his eyes handed me his watch and said he loved me. At this point I basically just had a meltdown. I don’t ever remember a time when I had cried that hard, it was horrible, and all I remember thinking was why am I doing this? If this is the last time I see my dad, this isn’t how I want it to be. My sister later told me that she had done the same thing the last two surgeries and at that point I gave her dad’s watch because I couldn’t hold on to it. It was bad enough being in that hospital and just looking around and seeing so many sad people, I didn’t want to think about it anymore than I had to. I was very scared and really regretting my decision to be there for the third surgery, while I hated being in the dark, there was just no way for me to get my mind off of the surgery.

third surgery

After my dad’s second surgery, he was doing really well. He did not have to radiation, but he did have to do chemo, which usually makes people pretty sick, but my dad always did extremely well, He just got tired. He acted weird because he was always tired and he never wanted to do anything.  My dad always kept a fairly positive attitude throughout the entire process of his recovery after his second surgery. We were always preoccupied with having to take him to a doctor’s appointment or something. 

After the surgery my dad slept all the time.  In October he went over to Terre Haute for one of the MRIs that he had received every three months since 2003, he was kind of nervous because his teeth were hurting, and it seemed like every time his began to hurt he would be diagnosed with cancer again, so he was basically freaking out. He learned that he once again had a metastasized tumor from his lung that had moved to his brain. The doctor’s began discussing yet another brain surgery for my dad which meant that he would have to go through the stress and rigors of surgery again. Brain surgery is extremely stressful on your body which meant he had a lot lower chance of making it through this surgery than he had with any other brain surgery he had, had to that point. My dad was very nervous about this surgery, but he was still positive. His surgery was scheduled for the second to last Friday of October in 2009.

Good News

As my sister, Andrea and my mom sat in that waiting room, waiting to find out how my dad was doing they were freaking out, but they had several people there with them. My aunt and my uncles were all there with them. My aunt Lori who is my mom’s sister, she was the one who pretty much arranged everything for my dad’s surgeries. She sells malpractice insurance to several doctors in Indiana. My uncles Larry and Tom were both there as well. They are my dad’s two older brothers. My minister from church, Shane Mullins, was also there.

                While I was in Cayuga with Brad I was also freaking out. I didn’t know what was going on at all. I was even more in the dark than my sister and mom because I wasn’t there. I hated being that in the dark. When I finally found out my dad was in recovery and that Dr. Miller, my dad’s brain surgeon, said that he believed they got about ninety percent or more of the entire tumor.

                My dad did not have to go through chemo after his second surgery which meant it seemed like he had a lot more energy than after the first surgery so it was a lot different than the fist time he had a brain tumor removed.

                 The surgery had taken a lot longer than the doctors had expected it too, but my dad’s recovery was a lot quicker then the doctors ever imagined it would be. My dad’s surgery was on the Friday before Father’s Day and we, my mom, my sister, and myself, were all bringing my dad home on Father’s Day, just two days after the surgery it was pretty amazing. It had been a pretty long weekend because of all the stuff that had happened and he was excited to get home, but the first thing he did when we got home was went in to his chair and completely crashed for three hours.

                Everything seemed like it was going to just keep getting better, my dad seemed fairly happy and a lot healthier, there was a lot less tension around the house since the surgery went well.

The second surgery

My dad’s surgery was scheduled for early June at IUPUI in Indianapolis, Indiana. We were all pretty nervous because we were not sure what was going to happen. We had decided it would probably be best for me to stay here in town with my grandparents and just kind of continue doing what I had already planned to do that weekend.

The night before my dad was due to have his surgery my mom, dad, and sister all left for Indy, but my brother-in-law, Dave, my two nephews, Tristan and Trent, and myself managed to surprise my dad at Texas Road House in Terre Haute, Texas Road House is my dad’s favorite restaurant. After a few happy hours of all of us being together for what could be the last time, my parents and sister all left for Indy.

My brother-in-law, Dave, gave me a ride home, where I went to bed and woke up early the next morning to feed my animals and help my grandparents feed the animals in the kennel. Then Brad Cash came and picked me up so I could help him with the 4-H rocket launch in Cayuga, Indiana near the Newport chemical depot, it looked like it was going to be a long hot day.

After driving all the way to Cayuga, Brad started checking the radar on his phone and decided with all of the wind rain moving in we shouldn’t launch the rockets, but we went through with the judging of the construction of the rockets which was inside one of the main buildings on the Vermilion County Fairgrounds.

While all of this was going on I was trying to get a hold of my sister to find out how my dad was doing, but I could not get a response to save my life and that was driving me crazy. I about worried myself sick that day.  

The rocket judging took until about seven that evening and my dad’s surgery had started real early in the morning, I was starting to get really worried that I had not heard anything out of my sister, Andrea, or my mom.

Just as we were finishing up I got a text from my sister that said my dad was doing good and was in recovery, this made me very happy.

As Brad and I were leaving Cayuga a horrible storm was blowing in and all I could think about was I really hope this does not hit Indy. On our way home the wind and rain were causing us to swerve and what not. The storm did hit Indy, but it was not nearly as strong there as it was near Cayuga, several days Brad told me that a tornado was spotted just miles from where we were in Cayuga.

By the time we finally got home and I was in an amazing mood because my dad’s surgery went well and I was finally out of that horrible storm. What I thought was going to be a horrible day turned out to be a pretty decent day.

After the Gamma Knife

My dad started chemo again. He started December 1, 2008 After the Gamma Knife. He did extremely well with the treatments like he had every time before, and unlike pretty much every other person we had known that had to do chemo. My dad constantly seemed tired, and slept a lot. We had a good Christmas, which was very important to us.

                On February 17, 2009 we met Dr. Mark Henderson, the neurosurgeon at IUPUI teaching hospital in Indianapolis who performed my dad’s Gamma Knife. Dr. Henderson was very pleased that the tumor had shrunk a bit.

                On April 21, 2009 my dad had a CT scan on his lungs; this resulted in the doctors saying that his lungs looked stable after the lung cancer. My dad had an MRI the same week as the CT scan, but the MRI was on his brain. On April 22, 2009 we received a phone call from Dr. Huh, my dad’s oncologist. Dr. Huh told us that the MRI was either showing scar tissue or another brain tumor, we were all praying for scar tissue. All of us just wanted my dad to have a good summer. On May 11, 2009 my dad had a PET scan and the scan showed activity in my dad’s right temporal lobe which is very serious. To this point it did not look like our prayers had been answered, we were all very scared. After the scan the doctors in Indianapolis began to drag their feet it was ridiculous. It seemed to us that the doctors had given up on my dad, and the thought of that scared us more than anything. During this time none of us could sleep, we were so scared, it always seemed like one of us was crying. It was a wait and see game, It was horrible!

 It had been almost a month by the time we finally saw a neurologist, Dr. Dropcho. We had to be in Indianapolis by 9 am Indiana time which 8 am Illinois so that meant we had to leave our house around 6 that morning, this was the earliest we had left the house for a doctor’s appointment in a long time. Dr. Dropcho seemed to believe that this tumor was in the same spot as the tumor that the Gamma Knife had been used on was. He believed this was another metastasized tumor, not the Glioblastoma coming back which was good news, I know that sounds weird, but it was really good news. Dr. Dropcho told us that my dad needed another MRI, a possible biopsy, and maybe another brain surgery. We had to come back after a week, and in that week they had preformed another MRI. The next time we visited Dr. Dropcho they had already began talking about when to schedule my dad’s surgery, and where they would perform the surgery. Even though Dr. Schapiro was a great surgeon, we did not want to go back to Wishard so we decided on IUPUI and my dad’s surgery was scheduled for June.

Gamma Knife

The year my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer was my seventh grade year and I was really close to my dad. He was diagnosed in January and they did chemo therapy, which never really affected my dad, and radiation that also never really affected him. My dad was positive throughout this whole ordeal, just like he was with the glioblastoma, his first brain tumor, which was amazing because most people, the second time they are diagnosed with cancer become discouraged. My dad always kept a great attitude, which helped my mom, sister, and I deal with this horrible diagnosis. My dad was cleared in March from the lung cancer, which was great! I know I had never heard better news, my dad was in remission, and that didn’t mean he was cured, but to us it might as well have, we were all extremely happy, but that all changed very quickly.

                Less than a month after my dad was cleared from the lung cancer my dad an MRI just like he had, had every three months since his first diagnosis. This had became a pretty routine thing for us, once every three months my mom and dad would go to Terre Haute in the morning, after one of them dropped me off at school, eat at Cracker Barrel for breakfast, and then go to Indiana MRI over in Terre Haute and then go to Providence Medical Center and talk to Dr. Huh, my dad’s primary oncologist, and the one doctor who has stayed a constant throughout my dad’s entire battle with cancer. This time was different, they went to Cracker Barrel like always and it all seemed pretty normal, but my dad’s teeth had been hurting, which is something odd that has happened every time he has had a brain tumor. He did not mention this to any of us because he was afraid of what it could mean. Everything went normal, but then a little over a week later Dr. Huh called our house asking for my mom and dad to come back over to Terre Haute so they could discuss the results of the MRI, at this point we all knew something was wrong because Dr. Huh usually just gave us the MRI results over the phone.

It turned out that my dad had another tumor in his brain, but Dr. Huh told us it did not look like a recurrence of the glioblastoma, that it was probably a metastasized tumor from the lung cancer. This is when we first heard the term Gamma Knife. Gamma Knife, it’s a scary sounding term and at that time it was highly experimental and we had no idea if would work. A Gamma Knife is a form of radiation that is about a hundred different radiation beams all focused on one point it is highly potent and my dad’s procedure was one of the first performed in the state of Indiana. It was a success and my dad went back into remission shortly after.

 

Why?

For four years after the pneumonia episode my dad did really well. Pretty much the only time he had to visit the hospital was for tests, it finally looked like he was better. We all thought things were back to normal, except for the fact that dad couldn’t work.

On January 9, 2008 my mom, dad, sister, and grandparents all came to Crestwood to watch me participate in the geography, I was in seventh grade and I was not expecting to do very well in the geography bee, I was good at geography, but I had been in the geography bowl a few times before and never really did all that well in it, but this time I won! It was great, we were all shocked. When we went home, I was ecstatic, but my dad was acting weird, none of us knew what was wrong, but he seemed in pain, and not as excited as he normally would be for me.

I walked outside, where my dad was, and I could hear him yelling for somebody to call 911. I panicked and ran over to the kennel, where my mom was. I told her to call for an ambulance. In stead of just calling the ambulance she ran outside and found my dad who by then had made to his chair on the porch and was sitting down. He did not look very good. He thought he was having a heart attack which was extremely scary. None of us knew what to do. We called 911 and waited, they took forever! As we waited for the ambulance to show up, a thousand things were going through my mind just, questions like, why, why us?. It seemed like God was picking on us, even though I knew he wasn’t. After my dad’s initial diagnosis with cancer we had all grown a lot closer to God, before the diagnosis we attended church maybe every other Sunday and only prayed at holidays and on Sundays. After the diagnosis we began to attend church every Sunday, and since the diagnosis, there hasn’t been a day where I haven’t thanked God for everything we have, and asked him to just bless my dad and anybody else who has been in a similar situation. This was testing my faith, and I didn’t know it then, but my faith would be tested a lot more over the next couple of years. When the ambulance finally arrived we had been waiting for over half an hour and we were scared. They rushed my dad to the hospital, where they determined he wasn’t having a heart attack, just a panic attack and after some x-rays they also determined he had pneumonia. They put my dad on an antibiotic and told him to avoid stressful situations then several days later when he was not getting better the doctors ordered a MRI which showed that my dad had a mass in his lung that looked like it was cancer. My dad, after a very drawn-out process of endless testing was determined to have small cell lung cancer.

the first winter

The fall after my dad was diagnosed with brain cancer I started the third grade, which I was looking forward to because I was excited to be getting back to school and spending time with my friends, and I'm pretty sure my parents were looking forward to me going back to school so they wouldn't have to look for someplace for me to go when they went to Terre Haute for my dad's chemotherapy and radiation treatments. My grandparents on my mom’s side managed the kennel while my mom was busy taking my dad to his chemo and radiation treatments. Through all this my mom still managed to be there for me with all the stuff that was going on, she helped me with my homework when I needed it and talked to me when I had questions about what was going on with my dad. I appreciated everything my mom did, but I realize now, not as much as I should have.

The winter after my dad was diagnosed he began having chest pains, at first we thought he was having a heart attack which would normally be a scary thing for anybody, but for us it was amazingly frightening, and none of us knew what to do, so we called 911, then my sister. We all waited at my house for the ambulance to arrive, but it was taking forever. We finally called after twenty minutes and cancelled the ambulance; my sister decided it would be faster if she just took my dad to the hospital herself. We waited in Emergency Room waiting room for a doctor to tell us what they had found in the multiple tests they had performed on my dad, the X-ray was the most telling of all the tests. It showed fluid in my dad’s lungs, which meant he had pneumonia, which almost always super- severe in people on chemo therapy because they have a weaker immune system with fewer white blood cells. The doctor’s decided to keep my dad overnight in the hospital to monitor his chest pain and just keep an eye on him. They put him an antibiotic regimen that included antibiotics through an IV while he was in the hospital and some pills while he was still in the hospital and when he went home. My dad spent the first night in the hospital without any complications, but he stayed another night due to the fact he was a cancer patient in the midst of an extremely aggressive, but dangerous chemo regimen, which he handled very well. This episode scared my entire family; we all thought we were losing my dad to a heart attack after all he had already been through, which we could not believe, even though it was just for a while, I think this experience drew us all closer to one another and helped strengthen my dad’s resolve to beat cancer, which was already pretty strong. My dad ended up getting out of the hospital three days later, and had to take an antibiotic for a few days afterward.

Summer following the surgery

The remainder of the summer following my dad’s first brain surgery was extremely long, or at least it seemed like it. There were daily trips to Terre Haute or Indianapolis for doctor’s appointments, radiation treatments, or chemotherapy treatments. My mom had to run our family business which even without the treatments that would have kept her busy because during the summer we have thirty or more dogs consistently in the kennel which is pretty much a twenty-four hour a day deal because the dogs constantly need to be turned out, fed, or watered. So, that first summer my mom was run pretty much into the ground, but with the help of my sister, Andrea, my grandma, and my grandpa she managed to do it all, which I think is pretty amazing. My dad hated the fact that he couldn’t help my mom more, but he tried to do his part by mowing and turning dogs out, but him being sick made me take on a lot more responsibility than I ever had before, I started to take the trash out, mow some, but just out in the big, wide-open areas around the house because my mom didn’t rust me on the mower, help water the dogs in the kennel, and feed the inside dogs, this was a huge step up from the stuff I had done before, which was basically nothing.


After my dad’s operation the doctor’s had said a complication from the surgery could be blood clots, and several weeks after the surgery my dad started having swelling in his legs, which is a sign of blood clots. After a trip to Paris Hospital and a sonogram on his legs it was determined that my dad had multiple blood clots in both of his legs, which was scary because it doesn’t take much for a clot to move to your heart or brain and cause a heart attack or stroke. The clots if they were just one clot, instead of multiple clots they probably would have been minor, but with it being multiple clots the doctors were all very concerned and had my dad stay three nights in the hospital which worried all of us because you never want somebody you love to be in the hospital for any amount of time, for anything. My dad stayed and was put on blood thinners, one in a pill, and the other in a shot, that had to be given by a doctor or nurse, so two of my mom and dad’s friends came out to the house and gave my dad the shots every single day. My dad to this day is still on the pill form of the blood thinner because he is still at extremely high risk of developing another one which could be even more dangerous than it was back then because his leg is almost always swollen , which means there is no physical sign of a blood clot.

My dad getting the blood clots, taught me that even though they got all of the tumor through the surgery, other equally dangerous stuff suddenly pop up out of nowhere.

The Surgery And the Days After

My dad’s surgery was July 11, 2003, 19 days after his initial diagnosis. The surgeon was Dr. Scott Shapiro, the same guy who did Lance Armstrong’s brain surgery. The surgery began early in the morning and lasted six hours at Wishard Hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana.


We spent the previous night at my aunt and uncle’s house near Indianapolis, it was the first time we had visited their new house and even though we were there for a very scary and sad reason I remember just thinking how huge it was, and how cool it was that we were staying there. My mom, dad, and aunt all left the house around 3:30 that morning to go to the hospital that was about an hour away, my uncle left the house around 7:00 for work, and me and my cousins got up sometime later that morning for a long day of just messing around and trying to keep my mind off of things.

I don’t remember much of the day of my dad’s surgery, but I do remember the phone call from my mom saying he was out of the operating room and in recovery. I just remember the sound of pure joy and happiness in my mom’s voice on the phone.

The surgery lasted around six hours which is about how long the doctor’s said it would take to remove the egg-sized tumor. At the time of the surgery we did not yet know that the tumor was cancerous, but the doctor’s thought it was from the way it looked. We were extremely relieved that the surgery went well and that Dr. Shapiro was able to remove the entire tumor.

While the surgery was a success we still had a long road in front of us. Once the tests on the tumor were completed we learned that the tumor was an extremely aggressive and, the one adjective nobody wants to hear, cancerous tumor known as Glioblastoma Multiforme. When my mom and dad were told the tumor was cancerous and would probably return sometime in the next five years my dad said, “I’m going to beat this; God’s got more for me to do here.” My dad had watched his dad, my grandpa, die of prostate cancer just ten years earlier, in 1993. He still talks about how he watched my grandpa waste away and eventually pass, and how devastating it was for him to watch that.

Two days after the surgery, I finally got to go visit my dad at the hospital. I was happy to see him, but when I was there they had his bandages off which meant the wound was exposed, and to this day, seven years later, that is still one of the nastiest things I have ever seen. I almost threw up and it made me so uncomfortable that I actually had to leave until they got the wound redressed. Something else that really scared me was how different my dad looked without hair. That is all I remember about my dad immediately after the surgery.

This experience taught me that cancer was an extremely real thing that could change the way you look at somebody.

The First Few Days

In June, 2003 my dad was diagnosed with a brain tumor. At the time I really didn't know what that meant because I was eight, but I knew it was bad.
Starting in late May of 2003 my dad started having massive, crippling headaches which was kind of scary for me because at that age, your dad is superman, he's unstoppable, or at least mine was. I just remember him laying in his recliner all day, everyday because his head hurt so bad.

In 2003 my dad was kind of on a job carousel and he was about to start selling insurance for AFLAC when the headaches began. My dad had been a salesman almost his entire adult life, starting with fertilizer in the 1970's, to nuts and bolts, then tires, and finally insurance for AFLAC and he loved every second of being on the road because he got to work with people. The biggest thing that affected my dad was not that he had the tumor, it was that he wouldn't be on the road anymore, doing what he loved and i know to this day, almost 7 1/2 years later, this still kills him.

One day in early June, 2003 my dad had a meeting with an AFLAC sales representative to learn what he had to do to also become a representative for AFLAC, and when he got home he was having one of the headaches, but this one was more severe than any of the previous ones, it was so painful that he couldn't even get out of his truck without my mother's and sister's assistance. This headache was the last straw, my sister rushed me to my aunt and uncle's house, where I would spend the rest of the weekend and my mom rushed my dad to Carle hospital in Champaign, Illinois, where he would spend the rest of the weekend. This all happened on a Friday in early June, 2003.

Once at Carle my dad was given an MRI and several other scans to detect what was causing the headaches. When they did this the detected swelling in his brain, but they couldn't tell if it was a hemorrhage or a tumor, but after a few days of observation and a few more tests they learned it was a brain tumor the size of an egg on the left side of his head, near his temple. On the Monday after he was admitted at Carle my dad was released and told that they would do everything they could to combat the tumor and that it was operable, but they needed to operate as soon as possible. So, they operated less than one month later.

Dr. Schapiro, my dad's brain surgeon is one of the best in his profession, and I remember thinking how cool it was that he would be the one to save my dad's life. My dad during this whole process, wouldn't let me forget that, that's what he was going to do, save my dad's life. Looking back that was a ridiculous expectation but that's how my dad was/ is, he's an optimist and probably will be until the day he dies.

What I learned from this was that things change extremely fast and you never know what to expect, my dad in less than two months went from being a normal, happy, forty-eight year old salesman to a permanent patient and retiree.