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"Your Wife Has Cancer..."
Four words that changed my life! I was absolutely certain that my wife, Sandie, would outlive me. It was supposed to happen that way. Men always died at a younger age. Life has a funny way of throwing you for a loop. In 1989 I was to find out how big a loop it could be. I had recently transferred from a division of the electronic component company I worked for to a subsidiary company located in Santa Ana, California. Shortly thereafter, the subsidiary moved to Escondido, California and I found myself driving back and forth the 180 mile round trip every day to our home in Brea. To make life easier, my wife and I had made an offer on a property in Fallbrook, closer to Escondido. Sandie had been a vital woman with energy to spare. Always active in various groups and around the house, she was fun to be around and supportive. She generally accepted my decisions after some discussion, even if she didn't agree with me. I learned later, from her diaries, that she didn't want to move away from Orange County where she had built friendships and a home she was comfortable with. But she was willing to move to support me with my work. Over a two year period she experienced a drop in her energy. She was slowing down, and was visiting the doctor more often for various ailments. The property we bought in Fallbrook was a beautiful parcel on a ridge with grand views. ***Discover how to cope when cancer strikes!*** Once escrow had closed on the parcel of land, having sold our house in Brea, we prepared to move into a rental in Fallbrook. The rental had started out as a candle factory. The offices became bedrooms and the main production room became a large combination family room, living room, and kitchen with very high ceilings, log cabin type wooden walls and tiled floors. The plan was to build a house on the ridge with views to the east of the distant Pala Mesa and to the west of hills covered with avocado groves. It was where we were going to raise the kids and eventually retire. Arriving home in Brea one night, three days before the intended move, I was surprised to find my wife sitting in her nightgown on the front porch, as it had cooled down after dark. When I approached and inquired why she was sitting in the cold night air in her nightgown, she explained she was running a fever and, having taken Tylenol and a tepid bath, she could not get her temperature down. I offered to drive her to the emergency room. She declined as our two young children were already in bed and she felt she would be better after a good nights sleep. After I ate dinner we went to bed. During the night I was awakened a couple of times by Sandie making painful sounds. The next morning, I dressed and prepared for the 90 mile drive to the office. Sandie slept peacefully and quietly. Since she had had a rough night, I presumed by her restful demeanor that she was feeling better. Fifteen minutes after arriving in Escondido, I heard, "Stan, your wife is on the phone." I picked up the receiver and said "Hi." Sandie's strained voice replied "Hurts so bad... The neighbor is taking me to the hospital." CLICK!! The line went dead. Within five minutes I was back in the car, making the hour and a half drive back home. I stopped at the house, but found no one home. I next drove to St. Jude, the major hospital in our area. There, I was led to a room where my wife was in bed, buried in tubes and wires. A group of doctors and nurses stood around her bed. One of the doctors told me that they had found a large object in her left lung, but they had no idea as to what it was. ***Learn ways to deal with the stress!*** He suggested it might be an amoeba colony or a group of some form of worm that had migrated up from the intestines or possibly a massive bacterial infection of some sort. We spoke for a few more minutes and he turned to leave. Then, at the door, he turned and added "To cover all bases, I have to mention that it could also be cancer; but it's not likely as your wife doesn't smoke or drink and there is no family history of cancer." With that, he left. They would do a biopsy and call me as soon as they received the results. Sandie's diary records:
The kids had been left with a neighbor, so I headed home. When I picked them up, I brought the neighbor up to speed on what the doctor had said; she offered to help in any way. Later that day, I returned to the hospital. There I received the news that froze my blood. The biopsy had shown that my wife had sarcoma, a deadly form of cancer. ***Know what you are up against!*** Nearly two years earlier, Sandie had begun to have trouble with her finger joints. The doctors tested her for arthritis and the tests had proved to be negative. They said they thought it probable that she had arthritis anyway, and prescribed for her the anti-inflammatory, Feldene, after which her joints felt fine. Later, it would be noted that difficulties with the finger joints was a sign of sarcoma. But since the Feldene worked, no one looked any further. As this indicator of sarcoma is rare, perhaps a rheumatologist would have thought to test for the disease. But since the doctors chose to ignore the negative test results for arthritis, a chance of catching the disease early was missed. The following year, Sandie, normally a strong and energetic woman, exhibited a drop in her energy. She was attending aerobics classes at the gym we belonged to and was having trouble finishing the workouts. It eventually got to the point where, when she would vacuum the house, she would have to sit down in a chair and catch her breath before she could finish a room. Something was terribly wrong. One doctor advised that she might have lupus, an autoimmune system disease, but she only exhibited a few symptoms for that disease. Her doctor advised more tests be done. She was scheduled to go back in another month. ***Find out what you can do!*** Sandie began complaining of neck pain. She went to have her neck X-rayed. The doctor could see no problem with her neck and sent her home, telling her the pain was all in her head. What he missed was that the nerve bundle which registers pain in the neck also connects to the lungs and the diaphragm. If the X-ray had been taken one inch lower, he would have seen the top of a tumor! Again, doctors had failed to look beyond the obvious and missed the truth. All of these events led up to the night I found Sandie sitting on the porch. When I arrived at the hospital, Sandie said the doctor had told her that she would live to see our son and daughter grow up. They were four and eight at the time. She was determined to beat this setback in our lives. I felt happy that we were going to be able to go on as a family for some years to come. I called the doctor from her room. During the conversation, he said, from his experience with hundreds of patients, she had one or possibly two years to live. I was devastated! Why had he told Sandie that she would live to see her children grow up? Why had he lied? I was furious! I left the hospital and drove to the doctor's office a few blocks away. He was very understanding. He quietly asked his receptionist to hold his calls and patients for half an hour and took me into his office. He explained that he had not lied. My wife had asked if there was any chance that she might see our children grow up. Knowing that miracles happen, that there had been recorded cases of people waking up one day and having the disease completely gone, without telling her the poor odds of her request, he had simply answered, "Yes." He explained to me that having positive goals, such as watching her children grow up, would give her hope. While it was not at likely that she would see that hope realized, if she had been told the statistical truth, she would probably give up and not enjoy the time we had left together. I understood what he was saying and agreed not to let her know. But knowing the truth, was a bitter pill to swallow. There are differing opinions regarding telling the truth of the prognosis to a patient. ***Where can you find answers?*** While I agreed with my wife's oncologist, Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote that a patient would actually know the prognosis intrinsically and that to tell them something other than the truth would not fool them. In Sandie's case, I was certain that she wanted to hear what she was told, whether or not she knew in her heart that she would not live to see her children grow up. It turned out the fever Sandie had suffered was the result of a large virulent colony of staphylococcus bacteria that had made residence in the middle of the cantaloupe-sized tumor in her left lung. Because blood could not get into the tumor, the tissue in the center of the tumor had died, providing a culture for the bacteria to thrive in. The doctors said that if the tumor had split open Sandie would have been dead in minutes. With heavy antibiotics over a period of two weeks, during which she experienced her first of many stays in the hospital, they got the infection under control. It was now time to address the cancer. In addition to the large tumor in her left lung, Sandie had egg sized tumors in her right lung and in her liver. The cancer had already begun to spread throughout her body. It was decided that her only chance of shrinking the tumors would be to have heavy doses of chemotherapy. It would require her to be in the hospital for several days at a time with the drug being administered through an IV drip. She would have the usual side effects of nausea, and hair loss, while killing some of the faster growing cells in her body alongside the cancer. The hope was that it would kill cancer cells faster than the rest of her. I asked about surgery or radiation. Her oncologist said radiation could not be used on the lungs and surgery would require removing both of her lungs and her liver. Either of these options would result in death. Chemotherapy was the only alternative; her only hope. There was no choice in the matter. Thus her treatments began. The book, Surviving Your Wife's Cancer,
gives advice and counsel to help you, the caregiver, to deal with the stresses and issues you will experience from the moment you have been
advised that the woman in your life has cancer. It combines my complete story with tools which, if applied, will allow you to recover more quickly, emotionally, physically, and mentally, whether or not your wife has remission. It may seem that your world is coming apart, but it only requires an ordered and compassionate viewpoint to steady it again. This book will give you answers to many questions such as... 
If you wait for the uncertainty to get worse... It probably will!
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What can you expect from doctors? Do they really have your best interests at heart?
