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Living as a cancer survivor has been a journey for both myself and my wife. It has entailed many events in our lives for the last sixteen years. I was diagnosed in 2010 with squamous cell cancer on a very odd place. My tonsils. This began a journey that to this day is still never over. I will explain that as we go.

I was then subjected to both chemo therapy and radiation that took place at the same time. There were many moments that I felt like giving up but was always encouraged by both my amazing wife and other family. On the way to being treated, I was put on a feeding tube and put in a hospital bed and oxygen at home. My wonderful sister-in law stayed with us for many months being sure I had food placed into the bag attached to me. She was an amazing help to us since my wife was still working and she had recently retired from the Marines.

I told her I hope to never have to repay her kindness thinking I never would. Well that wasn’t the case as we’ll talk about. My road to recovery is still taking place even today most physical, and a huge percentage mental. I’ll explain. After all the therapy, the treatments, the nurses visits and the physical aspect of it all our life continued. Overcoming the various chemical and radiation aspects would have lasting and unwanted lifelong effects. The chemo therapy damaged my kidneys to the point now 16 years later I am only 2 points away from needing to be on dialysis. I missed the chemo drug that wouldn’t have hurt my kidneys by one year.

The radiation since it was at my neck destroyed the enamel of my teeth so that it is now crumbling. My dentists just basically tells me we’ll take care of things as they happen. I can’t really have any teeth removed especially on my left side since it is possible they would never stop bleeding. Shortly after all of the steps taken to save my life they had to put an IVC filter into one of the main arteries because of blood clots. Unknown at the time was an undiagnosed blood clot issue I had. This led to another interesting journey.

At the time the IVC filter was done I was told “It’s a life time” thing which I had questioned because I have family in the medical world and they all said, “it’s usually temporary and not left in longer than a specified time”. Well they were right. Five years after it was installed, I went to go on my normal five mile walk I did and less than a block from my house all of a sudden I couldn’t walk. This led to an ongoing number of visits to doctors that were clueless. In desperation I went to my Oncologist that was a great man. He took one look at me and said “I know what it is, your filter is clogged”.

This started another chain of events that led me to the only doctor in the United States at the time was the only one that was trained in removing IVC filters that were never supposed to be left in people. Luckily he was only a couple of hours from us at Stanford University in California. After an initial visit and consult he performed a seven hour surgery a micro surgery to remove the clogged filter. The filter had cause so much damage by growing into the artery that four body stents were required to overcome the damage. 700 thousand dollars later I went home.

That wasn’t the end of the journey, but that was the major part of my experience. As noted earlier I wished that I would never have to repay my sister-in law for her kindness, but the Covid shot she had to get in order to travel gave her cervical cancer. She stayed with myself and my wife for nine months while she went through her round of chemo, radiation and surgery. She’s doing great now and is here to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our country so I am thankful and blessed in so many ways.

You never have the cloud over you ever clear. Whenever I may get a cold, or a sore throat as I did just recently it’s always on your mind. If anyone reading this has gone through this or have friends or family you’ll know what I mean. I hope this story can help understanding others that have been through this as it does change your life in every way you can’t  imagine, hopefully you have a supportive and loving spouse and family as I did. Hugs and love to all my Rumble family.