Dignity and Honor
One of my favorite people ever went under the knife this morning. Seems this man, who never drank or smoked and was in fine shape, had developed a right hefty tumor in his abdomen. As a matter of fact, it was very hefty, filling his abdominal cavity from top to bottom, wrapping around a kidney, all around and in the midst of the colon and intestines, past the stomach and pancreas, reaching upwards to his lungs.
Back in February, he had a heart attack which required quadruple-bipass surgery.
Before the heart attack, his cancer specialist gave him a 35% chance of surviving the tumor surgery. But he also gave him a 100% chance to die this year without it.
Tommy decided to live. He almost didn’t. Back in the winter, when he realized what his situation was, he seemed resolved to finish his life with honor and dignity, the same as he had lived it. His friends and his family were too important to him, though. In the end, he decided to keep living, the same as he always has, with dignity and honor.
So he took the radiation treatments. He survived the heart attack and the bipass surgery. He took more radiation.
And this morning he went to Chapel Hill, where the surgeon removed over 20 pounds of tumor with barely a ‘nick’ to any other organ. No lost kidney. No damaged colon. No half a stomach. Every complication we worried about seems to have been avoided.
Now comes a long fight back to the perfect health he used to enjoy. I think I’m gonna wait about a month and challenge him to some golf. If I wait much longer than that, I’m sure I’d lose.
I am Jon, just one of Tommy’s friends.