AMAZING WORLD OF MEDICINE

Girls

It is now 1-week post-op from moms' open-heart surgery. We are amazed to think that your moms’ chest was cut open, a new valve put in, and now home recovering, all in the space of one week. We are in a wonderful, amazing time in the field of medicine and so grateful for it. 

I think back to the early 70’s when my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, the early 80’s when my dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer and late 80’s when my sister Joan was diagnosed with breast cancer. Treatments, surgeries and therapies in those days were – not barbaric – but were certainly not easy. Those loved ones were part of the 'test patient population' for how to treat patients with cancer. Many methods were experimental, were a “let’s try this because we don’t know what else to try” method, in hopes it helped the patient, or gave the medical field the knowledge of what to-do, what not-to-do, or what to try next. The thought process was not to save the patients' life, but to buy them some extra time.

Because of those family members and their sacrifice, and many patients just like them, improvements came, sometimes slowly, but they came. When 2010 arrived and I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, many advances had been made from the time my dad had the same diagnosis. Early detection tests had been perfected, surgical methods had improved, medications were advanced, so much so that now, 12 years later, I remain cancer free. 

Over a decade has passed since my surgery and I know improvements have been made. I hope in the next decade there will be another exponential growth in improvement of treatments, testing and surgical methods. 

Five years ago when your mom was diagnosed with a failing heart valve, as the cardiologist told us surgery was in her future, our first thoughts and concern was knowing her sternum would be sawed open to gain access and the pain that would follow as she tried to recover from that surgery. Five years later, when we were told by that same cardiologist that it was now time to replace that valve, improvements had been so dramatic in those 5 years that your mother, (even though she still had her sternum sawed open), her pain level was nearly non-existent. She was sitting up in a chair the following morning. She stood up and took a few steps later that night. Days later she was walking the halls and the following day she was on her way home. 

We are amazed. 

We are grateful. 

We are blessed.

REMEMBER: Be yourself; everyone else is taken. - Oscar Wilde, writer

Be talkin’ to ya.
Dad