Jim was gone and I felt like someone had shot a hole through my life. I knew about the 5 stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. That’s not how I felt at all. None of these seemed to apply now. I must have gone through those stages during the last year … Read more
I spent the last year of Jim’s life searching the internet for a clinical trial to save his life. It was 2015 and he had been a cancer patient for almost 20 years. He had taken early retirement and was now running up and down the basketball court refereeing school basketball games. I … Read more
The bone marrow transplant had failed. No one had actually said that. It was hinted that even though Jim’s tumors were reappearing, the BMT could be working. In any case, chemotherapy was started, first CVP, then CVP-R. This drug combination worked extremely well and Jim continued his normal, everyday life; racquetball, basketball, work every day. … Read more
Looking back, it seems now that I always knew that I would someday become a widow. At least since the mid-1990’s when my husband Jim, a Vietnam veteran, was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Agent Orange was the cause. We had 3 children; 2 sons, 24 and 21, and a daughter, 12. The 24-year-old son … Read more