On November 11, 2005 my husband called me at work and ask me to come home right away. He had retired in June of 2005 and I had planned to retire when the school closed for Christmas Break. “Of course Sweetheart, I’ll leave right away,” I said. All the way home I felt like a huge stone was on my chest. He had a doctors appointment that day and I had called the nurse to make sure they did a chest x-ray. To me the rapid weight loss was serious. Although they had told him on the previous visit it was because he had retired. This doctor was a lung specialist. My husband kept his appointments with him every six weeks for the past two years, faithfully. He was a smoker and although he had tried many times to quit he simply could not. He went to Acupuncture, Patches, and Therapy and nothing helped. He very well knew the consequences.

He was standing in the dining room when I arrived. He looked at me and reached out his arms for me to come closer. He then told me that the x-ray revealed a cancer the size of an orange in his left lung. I fell in the floor and cried out, “I can’t live without you, I just can’t live without you, papa”! He picked me up and held me close. We both wept.

I called Atlanta to get an appointment with a team of specialists’. I had given them the x-ray taken by his lung doctor in our home town. They ordered an MRI and blood work. He was hospitalized for four days while it was being done. I stayed by his side 24/7. After all the results from the blood work and MRI had been completed, we were told the grim truth. Stage IV cancer basically all over his body. In every organ of his body. “How long do I have my husband ask?” “You have the fast kind and while we are not always accurate, probably three months at the most”, was the reply.

Shortly after coming home he developed a fever and chills. Another lung x-ray showed he had pneumonia. “Obstructive pneumonia” because the cancer in his left lung had obstructed the air ways. Ten radiation treatments were ordered to shrink the spreading demon called cancer. When the radiation treatments were done it not only burned the cancer it burned his throat. He no longer could swallow solid food, and could barely talk.

I took sick leave from work to be by his side. The doctors had ordered a hospital bed and other necessities to assist in his care. A visiting team of nurses came every day. He was now on morphine drops as needed for pain. He went in and out of consciousness. Looking back it feels like a bad dream, a blur. It was not supposed to end like that. We had been married for 49 years and we were as much in love as we were on June 2nd, our wedding day.

Life for me went into slow motion. When he started vomiting blood, he was admitted to Hospice. He took his last breath on my shoulder January 25, 2006. Our family, friends, and the Hospice staff standing around his bed, weeping. The pain was over for him. But that is where my pain begins.
My story is being shared for two reasons: 1)I hope that if you smoke,you will quit. 2) It is good therapy for me.
And I will post my story soon on how I have coped and the pain of his absence. Thank you for reading this.