9
Tough Conversations
REMEMBER THAT DEAL I had made with myself—the one about seeing the doctor if that “thing” still wasn’t gone by the time the PGA Championship was over? It was time. The PGA had ended dramatically on Sunday, August 17, with one of the greatest seven irons struck by a player . . . ever. Shaun Micheel had come to the seventy-second hole nursing a one-shot lead over Chad Campbell and had watched his tee shot bounce in the fairway and into the first cut of rough 174 yards from the pin. And that’s when he launched that seven iron. With the ball in flight, Micheel’s caddy could be heard saying those two words the pros love to say when a shot has a chance to be not just close but really close.
“Be right!”
Jim Nantz of CBS picked it up from there. “Is it right? It could be in!” And as the ball came to rest just inches from the cup, he said, “Add that to PGA Championship lore!” It was the perfect call of the perfect golf shot. Micheel tapped the ball in to seal the deal and would have his name engraved on the Wanamaker Trophy with all the other winners of the PGA Championship. This was the drama of sports at its highest level. Meanwhile, my own personal drama was about to unfold, quickly, over the next four days.
One of my neighbors in Braselton, Georgia, is an orthopedist. Dr. Rhett Rainey is a guy we can call if one of the kids breaks a bone or sprains something or if Cheryl or I suffer some kind of “weekend warrior” injury that reminds us we’re not as young as we think we are. On that Monday evening, Dr. Rainey was in his front yard, and I said, “Rhett, I need your advice. I’ve got this thing near my left ear,” and I demonstrated for him how it appeared when I moved my mouth to the right, as I’d done so many times while shaving. “Whaddaya think, Doc, is this just a normal thing that’ll go away in time, something you see a lot?” Obviously, my line of questioning was all geared toward a best-case scenario. Must have been a rather unique snapshot for anybody who happened to be driving or walking past at that moment—me with my mouth extending toward my right shoulder and him running his hand from my left ear down my cheekbone.
“Yeah, you need to have this looked at.”
“What do you think? Any ideas?”
“Not really something I deal with on a regular basis. I’ve got a good friend who’s an ear, nose, and throat specialist, and I could connect you guys, but you need to get this taken care of.”
I finally told Cheryl what I had kept to myself for the past several months, told her about my conversation with Rhett, and explained that the only reason I had kept it to myself was to keep her from worrying about it. I got a scolding. I don’t remember the conversation exactly, but it went something like this.
“Why did you wait so long to tell me? I’m your wife. I’ve been your wife for twenty years, and we don’t hide anything.”
“But I was just—”
“I’m your wife. If there’s a problem or something that might be a problem, we talk about it.”
“But it may have been nothing to—”
“I’m your wife. I love you. If there’s something wrong, I want to know about it. I want to help you deal with it. We go through everything together.”
I was in the doctor’s office (Rhett’s ENT friend) the next afternoon.
A benign parotid tumor. That’s what the doctor told me after feeling around on the left side of my face and asking a series of questions about how long it had been since I had first noticed the bump and whether there was any pain associated with it, which there was not. And of course, my question was, “What the heck is a benign parotid tumor?” He explained it was a tumor in the salivary glands. I didn’t like the sound of the word tumor, but I did like the sound of the word benign, and I loved the fact that the word cancer had not been spoken. So my next question was, “How do we get rid of it?” He explained that if it were to increase in size to the point that it had to be surgically removed, it would be a fairly commonplace procedure but would involve working close to the facial nerve, which calls for a very precise surgical technique. If the surgeon should nick the facial nerve, he told me, I would lose muscular control on that side of my face. That would mean everything from speech to smiling to closing my left eye would be affected, possibly permanently.
It was a frightening proposition, especially for a guy who makes his living on television, and while he assured me that those instances are rare, I was spooked by that worst-case scenario. Then he said that while it was his opinion I had a benign parotid tumor, he would be happy to set me up with another doctor to get a second opinion. I agreed and went home to wait for a phone call to tell me where and when this next appointment would happen. That word came on Wednesday, August 20. I had an appointment at the Emory University Hospital with Dr. William Grist. What caught me off guard was that his office was right next to the Winship Cancer Institute.
Thursday, August 21, 2003. Our twenty-first wedding anniversary. While Cheryl went to work, I sat in Dr. Grist’s office and heard many of the same questions I had been asked just two days before, but then there came a new one.
“Have you had a fine-needle biopsy?”
“A what?”
“On Tuesday, did the doctor draw a sample from the area of the tumor?”
“No, he seemed pretty convinced this was a benign parotid tumor, and we discussed the possibility of surgery at some point and the complications that might arise.”
“Well, before we go any further, I think we need a fine-needle biopsy.”
So I made my way from his office to building B of the Emory clinic, where Dr. Melinda Lewis, a pathologist, greeted me with a smile and a friendly, “This won’t really hurt much,” and in went the needle about a half inch from my left ear. She was right—it didn’t hurt, and in a matter of seconds, she walked into an adjoining room with the sample she had collected. A few minutes passed, and she returned with another needle.
“Sorry, I’d just like to do this one more time if that’s okay.”
“No problem.”
Except there was a problem.
When she returned from the adjoining room after studying the second sample, she explained that what she saw concerned her. Both samples were filled with lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell that grows and multiplies uncontrollably. She had seen this countless times in her twenty years at Emory, and in the most compassionate way possible, but without sugarcoating it, she told me that while the samples would need to be further analyzed, it appeared to her trained eye that I had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Cancer. Me. Cancer. That word hung in the air as we sat in absolute silence for what seemed an eternity but was probably no more than ten seconds. And then we just sat and talked for the next twenty minutes.
Dr. Lewis got her bachelor’s degree at the University of Michigan and went to med school at Emory, graduating from both magna cum laude, and I am certain that somewhere along that path she aced a course in doctor-patient relations, if there is such a thing. Or maybe she’s just Mother Teresa with a stethoscope. That twenty-minute conversation, during which we talked about everything from coming to grips with the diagnosis, to sharing the news with my family, to what kind of treatment I might expect to go through, to maintaining a positive attitude, was the best medicine I could have gotten at the time. She walked me to the door that led to the parking lot, and rather than shaking her hand, I gave her a hug and said thanks. She looked me square in the eye and with a smile said simply, “Hey, it’s gonna be okay.” And somehow I knew it would.
I was dozing on the couch that night when Cheryl came home from a workday that included an event that evening. I knew her first question would be about my visit to Emory, and I was dreading having to answer it. While Dr. Lewis had so expertly laid it all out in front of me that afternoon, I was holding tightly to the slim chance that the rest of the testing on the samples she had taken would reveal there had been a mistake. She told me Dr. Grist would be calling on Friday with the results.
“Hey, hon. So how did it go today? What did they say?”
“Well, they stuck a needle into the tumor and drew out a sample. They need to run it through a few machines, and they’ll call with the results tomorrow. Hey, you look tired. We could both use a good night’s sleep.”
I know, I know. Cheryl had already been hurt by my five months of keeping that undiagnosed “thing” to myself, and here I was again—telling part of the story. I’m sorry—I just couldn’t bring myself to say “cancer” at that very moment. I knew at some point the next day I would get a call from Dr. Grist, and it would more than likely support what Dr. Lewis had found, but what if it didn’t? Then what? I would have rocked Cheryl’s world with that one word—cancer—only to find out the next day that somehow, amazingly, it wasn’t. I was rationalizing my silence to the point of exhaustion. Today, nearly fifteen years later, I’m still ashamed of that. Cheryl deserved better.
The phone call came around 6:30 Friday evening as we sat eating dinner—Cheryl and me and Carmen and Michael and Eric, who had come home from college for the weekend. I excused myself from the table and hurried into another room, answering on the third ring.
“Ernie, this is Dr. Grist. The results of your fine-needle biopsy are in. I know you spoke with Dr. Lewis yesterday, and what she told you then is true. This is non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It’s a form of blood cancer, but I want to point out that it is a very treatable form of cancer, and I’m putting you in the care of one of the best oncologists anywhere. His name is Dr. Leonard Heffner.”
“So what do I do now?”
“I’m in the process of setting up another appointment next week. We’ll have to run some tests and have you scanned so we can determine if the cancer has spread to other parts of your body. Only then will we know what course of action to take in terms of treatment.”
As I hung up the phone and headed back toward the kitchen, Eric and Carmen met me in the hallway on their way out the door.
“Hey, Dad, we’re goin’ to Blockbuster to get a movie. Any requests?”
“Something funny.”
Cheryl knew who the phone call was from. She waited for the door to close behind Eric and Carmen before she spoke. “Well?”
“That was Dr. Grist from Emory.”
“I figured. And . . .”
“And, Cheryl, it’s worse than we thought. It’s cancer. Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”
I wish that moment on no man. Its pain is indescribable. Telling my wife of twenty-one years was a thousand times worse than hearing the word from Dr. Lewis the day before. We stood in the middle of the den holding each other and sobbing. By the time Carmen and Eric returned from the video store, we had fought to regain our composure. The rest of the night was a blur. We watched the movie the kids had picked out, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was. All I remember was lying next to Cheryl later that night, both of us staring at the ceiling and wondering aloud how this was all going to play out, how we were going to tell the kids the next day, how we were going to tell our parents, and how lucky we were to have each other for this unscripted chapter of our lives.
There were several difficult conversations to come. How do you tell your kids that Dad has cancer? How do you tell your mom and dad? There is no “easy start” guide like you find with a new piece of electronics. Simply charge this piece . . . plug this in . . . create a password . . . connect to Wi-Fi . . . boom! You’re up and runnin’. Nothing prepares you for the look on your kids’ faces when you say, “I need you guys to have a seat. There’s something we need to talk about as a family.” They know this isn’t going to be about a vacation we want to take when school’s out. This isn’t going to be about how they’ve been neglecting their jobs around the house or how they may have mistreated their brothers or sisters in a weak moment. So what was this going to be about? I could tell by the expressionless faces of Eric (eighteen), Maggie (sixteen), Michael (fifteen), and Carmen (nine) staring at me that they knew this was different. This was serious. And so all I could do was shoot straight.
“Gang, this isn’t easy for me. Eric and Carmen, you know I took a phone call at dinner last night. Well, it was from a doctor at Emory. There’s been a bump on the left side of my face near my ear for the last six months, and I finally had it checked out this week. The doctor was calling to tell me that it’s cancer. It’s something they call non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”
Immediately, they were in tears. At least Eric, Maggie, and Carmen were. I’ve already told you about Michael’s history. The gravity of the situation never really registered with him, probably because this family meeting had nothing to do with cars. When the hugs were done and the kids were finished wiping their eyes with Kleenex or shirtsleeves, I continued.
“Look, that’s basically all I know right now. The doctor says it’s a very treatable form of cancer. In fact, for what it’s worth, he said, ‘If you have to have cancer, it’s the best kind to have.’ I’ll have to go back to Emory next week for some more tests, and then we’ll know what I have to do. But this isn’t about me. This is about us. This is about all of us pulling together to get through this. If you’re worried about me, talk to me about it, not somebody from school who might have a story that scares you. We will get through this.”
Then we held hands and said a prayer, asking God for courage and strength and comfort and healing. And then we hugged some more.
My mother, Lois, is a cancer survivor. Breast cancer, colon cancer—she beat them both. She also knows the reality of hearing that one of her kids has cancer. My oldest sister, Dawn, was diagnosed with breast cancer in her twenties. She, too, is a survivor. Now two days after that gut-wrenching session with my kids, I was driving to my parents’ house to deliver my news. She reacted as any mom would, but it was with shock and sadness tinged with the resolve of somebody who had been down that road and made it. I told her that she and my sister had set the bar pretty high, and I was determined to join them in the ranks of cancer survivors.
My father wasn’t home at the time. He was playing in a charity golf tournament that day, ironically, at a course just two miles from my house. He and his foursome were putting on the fourteenth green in one of those scramble formats where the quality of the golf pales in comparison to the sheer fun of the day. My dad was the “celebrity” in the group—a baseball player and broadcaster who would enthrall his group with stories of his playing days and all those nights in the broadcast booth. Dad must have played in a thousand of those tournaments, raising money for various charities, and to this day men come up to me out of the blue and tell me of a time when they were lucky enough to be in a foursome with the old right-hander—and how they will never forget his stories, his friendliness, and how he treated each of them as if they were lifelong buddies. That never surprised me. It was one of those life lessons Dad had instilled in me without even trying to teach me. I just watched him. And hearing from men who had been impacted by his genuine kindness simply cemented the importance of character. All I ever wanted to do was be the best imitation of my father I could possibly be. That’s tough duty.
And so was this. I approached my father as he and the others made their way to their carts to head to the next tee.
“How you hittin’ ’em, Big Guy?”
“Oh, I don’t know . . . fellas, what are we . . . five, six under? We might be in the running for a bag of tees at the awards barbecue.”
“Think you might have a few minutes to stop by the house when you’re finished?”
“Sure . . . what’s up?”
“Aw, nothin’ really . . . just got something to talk about if you can stop by for a few minutes.”
“Just got a few holes left, and then I’m gonna emcee the awards thing, and then I’ll swing by.”
I can’t really remember ever seeing my dad, the old, proud marine, cry. As much as I’d always tried to emulate his character, we couldn’t be more dissimilar in that department. When Harry Bailey comes home to help his brother in the classic It’s a Wonderful Life and says, “Here’s to my big brother, George, the richest man in town,” I get that lump in my throat and my eyes get all glassy. When the father and son play catch in the final scene of Field of Dreams or when Steve Martin sees his daughter’s life pass before his eyes in Father of the Bride, I’m a teary-eyed, sniffling wreck. My dad stayed true to form late that afternoon when I told him I had cancer. And for once, in the midst of the most emotional of moments for me, I broke form. Didn’t shed a tear. We locked eyes, told each other how much we loved each other. I vowed to follow the lead of my mother and sister and kick the crap out of this disease that had suddenly invaded our lives again.
Now there was one more conversation I needed to have.