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Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Chapter 6: The News

From Take Care of My Child…for a While by Joyce Sawyer

It was Wednesday. I was getting dinner ready. Rhonda and Dan weren’t home from work yet, but they would be at any time and they would be as hungry as bears.

The phone rang. Dr. Waldman said he had the results of the biopsy. I held my breath.

“It is a solid tumor in the lymph node.”

“Is it benign?” (I had had two breast biopsies and the lumps were benign.)

“No, this is malignant.”

“You mean cancer? Ricky has cancer?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean. He will have to have surgery on Friday at 8:00 to remove the rest of the lump.”

I hung up and sat down. Dan walked in and asked, “What’s the matter, Mom?”

I said, “Ricky has a tumor. It’s some form of cancer. The operation is Friday morning. We need to call your father.”

Somehow we ate supper. No one was hungry. I tried to call Greenland, but there were no commercial lines going there. Then Rhonda called Bruce, a young lieutenant friend of the family. Bruce called his friend who was working the switchboard at the base, and he got Dale on the AutoVon [a military phone link]. How terrible to tell a father that news over the screechy lines of the phone.

He would try to get home by Friday. First I must get the Red Cross to verify the emergency so he could be released to come home.

There were no planes coming back to the States from Greenland at that time of the week, but a Danish friend of Dale’s, working at SAS, got him on an English jet going to Vancouver, BC. Then he caught a flight to Seattle and on to Kansas City. Bruce picked him up at the airport. He arrived about 10 AM Friday morning. What a trip!

The doctors decided to postpone the surgery until Monday in order to do all the bone scans and liver scan first, to see if the cancer cells had traveled to any other part of the body.

Everything else was clear. It seemed to be contained in the neck area. Dr. Holder operated Monday morning. Reverend Richard Person of the Belton Christian Church sat with us through the hours of surgery. Finally the surgeon came to the waiting room.

“I got as much as I could. It was outside the lymph gland and in the surrounding tissue. It was wrapped around the nerves. That’s the reason for the shoulder pain. It is plastered to the vertebrae. I got as much as I could. I couldn’t get it all. I’m so sorry.”

And there were tears in his eyes. He cared. He tried. But he couldn’t get it all.

Chemotherapy would be started in the next few days and radiation within the week.

“Oh, my baby. My poor baby.”

Dale had to go back to Sonderstrom and get things ready to turn over to the next chaplain. Now I wished he didn’t have to go. Why didn’t he just stay with us? I was tired and emotionally drained, and now I was angry, too. Surely the Air Force could carry on without him when his son was so ill.

Now we were assigned a nurse social worker. She helped explain the new procedures and she went with Ricky all the places I couldn’t go. She was there to answer questions or to just talk. She also provided play therapy for Ricky.

I knew I couldn’t live at the hospital day and night and keep everything going at home. Rhonda and Dan took turns sleeping next to Ricky’s bed so I could go home and get some rest, but they had their jobs, and besides I needed moral support. Especially during the times when Ricky’s life was at a low ebb.

I called Mom and she said of course she would come. Then followed weeks of back and forth to the hospital, 25 miles each way.

Ricky went into a deep depression. He wouldn’t eat or open his eyes or speak to anyone. Finally, as a last resort, a little boy was moved in to Ricky’s room. He was having plastic surgery on his lips. He had already had nine operations because of a hair lip and cleft palate. Ricky opened one eye to see what all the commotion was about.

Before, everyone had been kept out of the room because of Ricky’s lack of immunity and the fear of germs; but Ricky’s emotional state had to be improved regardless of germs, and a little crying boy was the answer.

At the end of August, Dale came home and it was time to move again. We were assigned to McClellan AFB in Sacramento, California. Rhonda would go back to college and Dan would stay in Belton and enter Longview Community College. Diane would go with us, even though she hated to leave her friends and dreaded starting a new school. The thought of crossing the country with a sick child almost paralyzed me.

Ricky had to have chemotherapy the day before we left. We were staying in a motel. He threw up all over the bed and we had to call and ask for clean sheets.

By this time all his hair was gone, but he had a wig arranged for by the leukemia fund and shaped just right by a kind barber, free of charge. Ricky wore the wig in public. It looked almost exactly like his real hair.

Ricky developed a bowel blockage on the way across the country. He got sicker and sicker. By the time we reached Sacramento, things were desperate. We called the pediatrician at McClellan AFB and he made arrangements for us to enter Travis Air Force hospital. There we met one of the kindest and best doctors we have ever had—Dr. Fred Serota. He got Ricky back on his feet and started him on his monthly chemotherapy protocol.