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.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Thursday, August 26, 2010
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.
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.
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