August 1-2005

For the first time in my life I felt a pain I haven't felt before. My husband Tom has Lung Cancer. It is news that no one ever wants to hear. The Tumor is located in his right lung, in the upper part and it is about 3 to 4 centameters wide. Here is an example.... take a golf ball, set it on the paper and set your pen just up against it and draw around it, that is how big it is.

So far the cancer has not spread out to any other parts of his body. How we found out about this is that he came to bed with really bad pains in his chest on July 27th, the next morning same pain, that was on the 28th of July. I could not get him to go to the hospital. The next morning July 29th he still had the pain in his chest and it went to his back, he went to the hospital. Thinking at first it was a heart attack with the pain in his chest again.... we couldn't have been more wrong. He called me here at the house... I was not able to go with him... no baby sitter. We have 2 little ones a 4yr. old and a 2 yr. old.

They admitted Tom and he kept telling me "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry". He kept saying it over and over. I finally asked him, "Tom, do you have Cancer?" I don't know why I asked that question when I already knew the answer.

After hanging up with him, I could not breath, all the air had just been sucked right out of me. I lost it. I called my mother and told her, "Mom, Tom has cancer." She had to ask me three times what I had said because she couldn't understand what I was saying, I was crying so hard. I told her "This isn't fair, I can't live without him, how come all the bad things have to happen to us?" My mom called my friend Gail Pearson. This woman is Miss-Fix-It! Not this time, this is the one time she can not fix something. " I feel so helpless", she said, "I have always been able to fix things for you and now I can't!", all I could say was "I know, I know."

This is just the beginning of the very long Yellow brick road. I have kept too my wedding vows and I plan to keep to it. We got married in 1992 on July the 3rd, Through sickness and in health; he got sick first.