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| ISBN-13: | 9781468571844 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 04/13/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 244 |
| File size: | 394 KB |
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You Don't Stop Living
A Family Cure For CancerBy Jack Dold
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 Jack DoldAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4685-7186-8
Chapter One
September
September 20, 2010
I was in China, with one of the University of California Alumni groups, when Mary was diagnosed with cancer. The word hit like a hammer to my temple, almost a crippling blow when I first heard it. It is what we were raised to fear—the dreaded "C-Word," not to be uttered out loud for fear it might hear you, like Valdimort in Harry Potter. We had other fear-inspiring words too, when Mary and I were growing up. We were in the era of polio vaccines, which brought hope in the war on that awful disease. My brother Bob and I had to move out of our small rented house in El Cerrito, because our roommate had tuberculosis. The house had to be fumigated and Hugh sent to a sanitarium. Jerry Lewis was beginning his telethons for muscular dystrophy. We had lots of fearful illnesses in those young days, but none quite as scary as cancer. That was the one you couldn't get out of. Cancer was the end of the line. All of us had friends and relatives, even schoolmates, who had succumbed to the dread disease; fear of cancer was endemic in those days.
The times have surely changed. Today we probably know more people who have survived cancer than those who have lost the fight. "He's in remission" has become a standard phrase, although most of us don't exactly know what that means, or what it doesn't mean. It is almost as common to hear that someone's cancer has "recurred," but our mind continues to stay back on the remission level.
Whatever our toned-down thoughts on cancer are now, they are only relevant if the person in question is not in your family. I found out in China that the word continues to be horribly frightening when it is used to describe someone you love. In that initial shock, my mind bounced back and forth between hope and despair on a plane that was completely outside of reason, as fear provoked tears and doubt battled with certainty.
Mary, as well as our two daughters, Nancy and Anne, urged me to finish the tour, assuring me that there was nothing I could do if I came home early that was not being done already. Of course they are right, but staying on the road certainly created in me a measureable amount of guilt. In my mind, I knew that Nancy and Anne would handle everything that needed to be done, would provide the love and attention that Mary needed at the moment. I was also certain that Mary would be accepting this diagnosis with the same unruffled demeanor that she has handled her entire life. For me to leave the group and rush home would almost be grandstanding; the girls can handle things as well as I. Sometimes it comes as a shock that folks can actually get along fine without you, but I finally convinced myself that my presence could wait.
Over the years my presence often waited because I have been "on the road" for almost forty years. In the 1970s, I was happily settled in as a teacher and vice principal at Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland, California. Then Mary's brother, George, and I decided to go into the travel business. George founded California Field Studies in California and I moved to New England to begin American Field Studies. Simply stated, we took school teachers on travel courses that earned them graduate credits. Field studies evolved into Golden Gate Tours, which we have run in California together since 1985. Since then we have taken groups, mainly senior citizens and university alumni organizations, to just about every part of the world. I have been away from Mary and the girls many times. The tour with Cal, the University of California at Berkeley, was to be my last, the beginning of retirement.
Even though I stayed to finish off that tour, I did make one vow in China that until Mary was cured, she would be the center of all of our attention, that everything else in our lives would take a back seat to her well being. That might seem a small thing to someone not familiar with the Jack and Mary Dold family, but it is not. Mary has never been the center of attention because she never wanted to be, and never has needed to be. She has always been that thoughtful mother and wife and sister and aunt and grandmother and friend who cared deeply for everyone in her life, did things for them, and never asked for anything in return, often didn't even know how to express her thoughts in an emotional way.
I vowed that Mary was about to get payback for the thousands of cards and gifts and Cenacle of Prayer enrollments, the hours of work, the unceasing attention to the needs of others. It is Mary who is now in need of help, and we will provide it without limit. It helps too that I have just retired, after almost forty years in the tour business. Without knowing a thing about Mary's cancer, I mentally checked off the next year as being consumed by that illness. I didn't know then how prescient I was.
Saturday, September 25
This morning I got back to our home in Green Valley, Fairfield, California, feeling very uncomfortable with the world I was about to enter, a world that now contained an unwelcome visitor—cancer. Nancy and Annie have given Mary all of the help and support she needs at the moment, have spoken with the doctors, have assisted her in the multitude of tests that are the beginning of her journey with this illness. They have gone through all of the GI tests, colonoscopy, x-rays, various upper body scans, blood tests of all sorts. Way back in the spring, Mary began complaining of having dry mouth and loss of appetite. She was losing weight in chunks, which we all assumed was the result of not eating enough. In fact, Mary had started again on the South Beach Diet, a regimen she and I had successfully followed a couple of years ago, only to begin putting on the weight again as soon as we finished. It includes two weeks of near starvation at the beginning, which I assumed was what Mary was going through. But the lack of eating became a worry, then a definite problem, so Mary went to her doctor, Dr. Vanita Jain, who instituted the search for the problem. Those tests were still going on when I left for China in September. Of course, they never discovered anything, until they decided on a full PET scan, for the first time bypassing the G.I. assumptions and expanding the search to below the waist. That's when they found the cancer. Nancy told me on the phone that they thought it might be Stage 3 or 4, that it was a tumor in Mary's inner thigh. She said there were smaller tumors elsewhere.
At that time, I didn't know what Stage 4 meant, that the disease had metastasized to invade other areas of the body, but I knew that any stage higher than one was bad news. The doctors told the girls that Mary's cancer was a sarcoma, a tumor in the soft tissue. Two of my college classmates, Tom Meschery and Donald Dirito had sarcomas, Donald's very recently. On the plane coming home I resolved to contact both of them as soon as possible, figuring it would be the first logical step to helping Mary.
Mary's regular doctor, Dr. Jain, contacted an oncologist named Shoba Kankopati, who was with the Epic Group at a cancer treatment center in Pleasant Hill. Mary met with Dr. Kankopati, Dr. Shoba as she is usually more easily called. She is a young, attractive woman, remarkably slim. Her family comes from Pakistan. Dr. Shoba called for a biopsy which another doctor, Dr. Kim, started a week ago, and then stopped, declaring that it was beyond his ability to proceed. Before he closed up the incision, he said that cancer was most definitely present. The girls were furious with his actions, saying he shouldn't even have attempted the biopsy if he wasn't capable of completing it, but I calmed them a bit, saying that at least he stopped and didn't blunder on, possibly making things even worse. Dr. Shoba also suggested a surgeon, Dr. Rakesh Donthenini, who would do another biopsy, hopefully this time a complete one. That was the state of things when I arrived at home.
Monday, September 27
I met with Tom Meschery this morning. Tom and I were classmates and basketball teammates at St. Mary's College half a century ago. He recently faced multiple myeloma, had a full body stem cell transplant and is apparently in remission. Years ago he also had a sarcoma in his lower leg. He told me that they removed the tumor before it spread and that after a year of scans he was declared cancer free. It has not returned, although the myeloma is a much more virulent form of cancer, and now absorbs far more of his time and attention. It was reassuring to know that he has beaten cancer twice, and he said he was confident that Mary would do the same. His sarcoma occurred some time ago, so he wasn't in a position to tell me much about the current state of treatment.
Tuesday, September 28
Another college classmate, Donald Dirito, is still in treatment for a sarcoma, again in his leg. Donald is a very meticulous man, and when he was first diagnosed, he scoured the country looking for the best physicians to treat his disease. He even flew to New York to visit with a doctor who was supposed to be the country's leading expert on sarcomas. I met with Donald today at his Volkswagen agency in Walnut Creek. He is a walking encyclopedia on the disease, and he filled me in on what he had gone through.
In New York he learned that the best surgeon anywhere was right here in the Bay Area. Donald pulled out his three-inch book of research notes on his effort to deal with his cancer. In front was a list of doctors rated by him from 1 to 10.
"This is the doctor who operated on me, Dr. Rakesh Donthenini."
"In Oakland, on Telegraph?"
"That's him. He's the best in the business."
"That's who Mary is going to see next week. He's supposed to do her surgery."
Donald tends to be very excitable and emotional. He nearly burst into tears when I told him that, so happy was he for Mary. "Then you have nothing else to do. Dr. Don is simply the best."
I can't express what this endorsement meant to me and Mary. We are neophytes as far as medicine is concerned. We are also products of the 1950s, which means we were raised to trust people in positions of authority—policemen, teachers, priests, parents. And that includes doctors, who back then were placed in a very high position by everyone. The fact is that neither Mary nor I are capable of distrusting people, so I was very worried about how to go about the process of picking the right doctors to treat her. Donald Dirito is capable of such an investigation, doesn't trust as well as we do, and he really has done our work for us. Of course, that also means that I trust Donald!
I am looking forward to meeting Dr. Donthenini.
Wednesday, September 28
Annie and I went with Mary to meet Dr. Donthenini this morning. He is a very impressive man, relaxed, confident, and handsome with a warm smile that immediately made us comfortable. He took us through the details of sarcoma, showing us the PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scan results where tumors were discovered. Mary has a large main tumor in her inner thigh and smaller ones in lymph nodes on both sides of her abdomen, plus a small one on her lung. He said that he was not concerned with the small tumors but the large one would have to be removed, since it was the source of the others. He examined Mary's leg, commenting obliquely that the first attempt at a biopsy had been done differently than he would have done it, based on the position of the cut, and explaining exactly how he would do it. He assured Mary that it would be as small an incision as possible. He wanted to do another biopsy immediately to determine the exact nature of the large tumor, saying that he would rather have an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) instead of the PET scan because it is much more detailed. His assistant, Jackie, would arrange for the MRI this afternoon and the biopsy tomorrow. We found that none of the imaging labs had any openings until next week, but that wasn't acceptable for Dr. Donthenini and he told her to check some others. She found a lab in Emeryville who could do the MRI this afternoon. The biopsy is scheduled at Alta Bates tomorrow.
I can't begin to say how reassuring it is to have a doctor who acts on things immediately. Of course, we could interpret the speed with which all of this is occurring as a bad sign that the doctor doesn't want to let any more time elapse before treatment begins because of the virulence of Mary's tumor. Still, it is refreshing to have such forcefulness called into service in your behalf. Mary's MRI was a detailed one, involving a long period in the tube with, as she reported it, considerable "noise."
We will get the word on the biopsy results next week. For this weekend, we decided to put everything into the background and drive to Nancy and Marty's farm in Eureka, Nevada, and let the family surround her for a few days before the biopsy hammer falls. Our daughter Nancy met her husband, Marty, when they were students at St. Mary's College in California. Marty was born in Eureka, Nevada, four hours east of Reno, on what they call "the loneliest road in America." About fifteen years ago, after the birth of Kasey, our first grandchild, they moved to Eureka, and bought a 640 acres, which was planted in high grade alfalfa.
They have fashioned a wonderful life for themselves and their two children, Kasey and Joshua. Nancy is a dietician, receiving her B.S. at St. Mary's and M.S. from Loma Linda University in Southern California. While Marty farmed, Nancy developed a career in long-distance nutrition, joining positions in Ely, Elko and Reno with fax and email. She is our in-house dietician and nutritionist.
Mary and I find that life on the farm, removed as it is from the bustle of the big city, is refreshing, a time where we can focus on the grandkids, and let everything else take second billing. Actually, truth be told, everything takes second billing to the grandkids, something that every grandparent readily understand.
October
Tuesday, October 2
I am sitting on the back porch at Marty and Nancy's, watching the sunset perform its magic on Diamond Peak across the valley. The kids' farm and school activities seem to be the exact elixir that Mary needs as she steels herself to face the medical problems ahead.
Kasey just drove by on Gold Street in her Ford Ranger on her way to Deanna's and the Eureka High Spirit Week Dance. Is that possible? Kasey, a junior in high school and driving? Where has the time flown, from when that beautiful little blond-haired, blue-eyed doll captured my heart more than sixteen years ago? If anyone were here with me right now, they would see a tear in my eye, hear the quiver in my voice. Kasey has grown into a complex young woman, a beautiful person of strength, and intelligence, of carefully moderated highs and soul-searching lows.
This week she has competed in volleyball, (I watched her play against a pair of teams, three wins, one loss, moments of joy, of depression, of triumph and loss), been quarterback in the flag football game, appeared as the junior class princess at halftime of the homecoming game, participated in the spirit week rally and snake run through town and tonight is at the dance. In school she has a killer junior year schedule—junior college classes on the computer in math and English; advance placement classes in civics and writing; Spanish and chemistry. She will worry about each of those and she will conquer them all, because at heart, my gentle Kasey is a fierce and dedicated competitor. She takes everything seriously. Lord help you if you don't!
Yesterday I watched Josh play his first meaningful minutes in a varsity football game. You can't help but notice him—he is that little #13 who is a head and a half shorter than anyone else on the field, whose total body weight is a third of what the varsity linemen bench press. I watched him field a punt on the bounce, skid to his right through a big hole, then dart left into the open. The entire Eureka crowd rose to its feet with a roar because this little guy has captured their imagination, as he has all of his teammates, with his speed, his courage, and his spirit. "Shake 'n bake," they call him, a water-sprite of a boy skimming the surface of the field as he runs. He would have scored on that punt return except that a big lineman leveled him in one quick blow, planting him straight into the turf. He held on to the ball as his teammates plucked him from the ground, patting him on the helmet until he almost had a concussion. Nancy shrieked; Marty and I burst with pride. Josh has grown up too, a high school freshman now, and he doesn't yet know quite what to do with his newfound status. Nancy showed me a picture today of Josh and friends, including cute Beth Damele, who was wearing his #13 jersey. I asked him about that.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from You Don't Stop Living by Jack Dold Copyright © 2012 by Jack Dold. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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