Ten years of living life
Keep those book selfies coming
The Front Page
Morning Update
Tuesday, September 14, 2021
By Ken Tingley
For more than an hour I had been sitting in the hospital waiting room. It was crowded with all of us waiting word about how the surgery had gone on the other side of the swinging door.
Every 15 or 20 minutes, a doctor emerged, surgical mask pulled down and wave one of the families into the small conference room, then close the door.
It was in those rooms where lives changed.
Where futures were decided.
Where there was good news, and bad.
I watched intently through the glass, reading the faces, the expressions, the body language. You really didn’t need to hear the words. It was right there on their faces.
When the doctor opened the door, there were handshakes, occasionally a hug, sometimes a smile, but other times tears.
I suspected it was an acknowledgement there was a long road ahead.
That was 10 years ago.
My family had just returned from a dream trip to France. We had seen the Eiffel Tower, paid our respects to the dead at Normandy and made a long overdue visit to cousins in the south. It was the family trip we had always wanted to take.
By the end of the journey, Gillian’s ankles were swollen and she was feeling bloated. She knew something was wrong, but she didn’t say much to us. And she still made the climb to the top of the Cathedral at Norte Dame.
Gillian visited several doctors when we returned, but they were unable to find anything wrong.
I headed out to Rochester by train for the annual New York State Associated Press Association awards banquet. I expected a relaxing train trip and a chance to renew friendships with colleagues from around the state.
Instead, I got a call from Gillian. Another doctor had found a mass in her abdomen. They suspected ovarian cancer. She would need surgery immediately. The train was an agonizing journey of helplessness. I began doing research on ovarian cancer and local doctors who could treat the disease.
We decided on an oncologist in Burlington, Vt. who specialized in ovarian cancer.
Each bump along the two-hour drive through the Vermont countryside caused Gillian considerable pain. The doctor confirmed the diagnosis and scheduled surgery two days later.
Halfway through the surgery, the doctor called from the operating room. He had removed a grapefruit-sized tumor and drained six liters of fluid from her abdomen.
The waiting room at Fletcher Allen gradually emptied out and before long there were no other families to watch.
There was just me.
My wife’s doctor called me into the conference room.
He closed the door, too. I’m not sure why. There was no one else in the room, no one to watch my reaction, to read how serious things were.
He told me the cancer had spread to other parts of her abdomen, but he was sure he had gotten all of it.
He told me about installing a port where they would pour in the poisonous drugs to save her life. He told me she would need more surgery the next morning to install another port.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t understand much of what he was telling me at the time. That understanding came later. What I wanted to know was the prognosis. It’s the final question that comes in the conference room.
The doctor recited statistics, a long line of numbers and percentages. Finally, he said it was 50-50 my wife would survive three years.
She was 53 years old.
She had a 15-year-old son at home.
And I certainly wasn’t ready to say goodbye.
I don’t recall Gillian ever asking that question of me or her doctor. She doesn’t recall it ever being that dire.
A few weeks later we began our regular trips to Burlington for chemotherapy. Two weeks on, three weeks off. We would arrive at 10 in the morning and leave around 4 in the afternoon, sometimes later. It was usually dark by the time we got home.
Six months after the surgery with the chemotherapy done, I wrote a column titled, “Twists and turns on the way to normal.”
Whenever I come across the column, I feel compelled to read it.
Even now, I can’t read it without the tears trickling down my cheek.
Here’s the most important thing from that column:
“So six months later, the darkness of that September surgery has lifted. Upon reflection, it is odd how quickly the battle becomes part of the routine, part of the regular rhythms of life. It was as if those trips to Burlington were trips for groceries.”
You don’t battle cancer, you live with it, you make the best of it. How you do that, is up to you.
“Gillian made it seem easy,” I wrote in Aril 2012. “She made it seem normal, so hum-hum what she was going through, and that allowed us to get on with our lives. That was a great gift.”
She told me that when Gillian she was done with the chemo, she wanted to visit Ireland. I suspect part of her believed it that might be her last trip. So on the one-year anniversary, we visited Ireland just as her hair was beginning to grow back.
But it wasn’t the last trip.
We visited England, Italy twice, Switzerland, Scotland, Austria and Germany. There were trips to Hawaii, Key West and New Orleans.
She saw her little boy appear in high school musicals, orchestra concerts, swim in dozens of meets in high school and college, attend two proms and visit 13 colleges.
She cried when she left him that August day.
But she kept putting one foot in front of the other and she kept living living.
Unfortunately, life can be cruel. Four and a half years later, the cancer came back and so did the chemotherapy and the side effects. She would beat it back, and then it would return have spread and increased in size. But it never stopped her. Not once, that I ever saw.
At one point, we went to visit the doctors at Dana Farber in Boston to see if they had any answers. The doctor was amazed at the amount of chemotherapy that Gillian had endured. She couldn’t believe the number of rounds. She couldn’t remember any other patient that endured so much.
So here’s the thing about this September. It’s 10 years later and Gillian is still here. And more importantly, it has been a great 10 years living life and enjoying it all.
That’s probably a little easier for me to say, I didn’t have all the poison poured into my body. I didn’t lose my hair or have to battle the anemia.
The latest treatments involve infusions three times a week. She does that herself, too. I often see her puttering in the yard while hauling her infusion backpack around.
So when I wrote that first column in 2012, it wasn’t really the end of the story, but the beginning.
So we’re getting ready to celebrate her 10th anniversary. Not of surviving cancer, but of living life, of refusing to leave anything on the table. Because sometimes, you do beat the odds.
Latest on book
It was great to see one reader tell me that the story about Bruce Manell, Post-Star bowling columnist and former police chief in Hudson Falls, really moved her, and that she had no idea about his service during World War II.
Another wrote about Ken Powers and Tom Casey’s gift of life when Ken needed a liver transplant.
Others have mentioned other stories, so it is great to hear that those stories have meaning for readers, too.
Selfie fun
We’ve been having some fun with the book, too. I’ve been asking folks to post selfies of themselves with the book. It has morphed into pets with the book, one lobster and a scarecrow. If you get the book, keep those selfies coming on Facebook.
While the book is available on Amazon.com, it is also available locally at Ace Hardware and The Silo in Queensbury, the Chapman Museum in Glens Falls, Battenkill Books in Cambridge and Northshire Books in Saratoga Springs.
I’ve tried to take my own selfies in those locations as well.
Congratulations to Gillian, and to you for sticking by her. That is what love is about.
God bless you and Gillian. She is a strong woman to endure what she has been through. Thank you for sharing her story. I have to go get a copy of your book. I really enjoy all these columns.