Everything is Great… Until it’s Not

And no one knows when it will happen.

December 6th 2022, Roger and his good buddy David did a Taco Tuesday fly-in to Arcadia, Florida. He looked forward to the flight after David invited him the day before and Roger said something like “long way to go for a taco.” We laughed a little and I thought “Well, isn’t life about the journey?” That’s how RVers rolled in our ten years of travel.

Roger was an Air Traffic Controller in the Air Force and has always had a passion for airplanes. He often told me he wished he knew how to fly, but as life would have it, it wasn’t on the priority list. On the other hand- owning an RV certainly was.

Oh how he loved talking to the Air Force pilots back in the good old days and now often watches pilots on Flight Tracker and various other sights just for entertainment.

Taco Tuesday rolled around with a little fog in the morning, but clearing skies made it a beautiful day for a taco. LOL! You thought I was going to say a beautiful day for flying, but as it turned out, a little bit bumpy. That never bothers Roger, but if it were me, I might have lost my Taco! I know all of this because every time he flies with David, he comes home and tells me with a touch of excitement in his voice how it went from start to finish. I always listen intently because I fly in little planes vicariously through him. I need a little more plane between me and the ground!

Why am I telling you all of this? Because it marks the calendar for the course of events that followed.

As it turned out, Roger felt some pain in his chest getting in and out of the airplane on Taco Tuesday and never said a word about it until the next morning. He told me he had a bad pain across his chest and that maybe he should go to the emergency room. I started asking the important questions about the pain and he did not appear to be in any coronary distress as he answered them, so I suggested he call our Primary Care Physician to see if he should go to the ER. They asked him some of the very same questions I did and determined if he could get to the office to go in right away (they are across the street from our hospital.)

An X-ray was done and all his vitals were okay. But an X-ray led to a CT scan, which led to a Pulmonologist, followed by a bronchoscopy (Merry Christmas), which confirmed a large inoperable tumor found in his trachea leading to his upper right lung- which was collapsed. A Biopsy confirmed that he had a very aggressive small cell neuroendocrine carcinoma. Cancer of the worst kind. An Oncologist was called in and ordered an MRI and a PET scan, but Roger decided to celebrate a Happy New Year with a ride to the ER after he could hardly breathe with a side of lightheadedness, resulting in a 3 day visit, and I’m not talking about the Ritz. His MRI was conducted in the hospital exactly one month after he flew with David. The PET scan was conducted a couple days after his release at a cancer center.

In this very short amount of time (only on the calendar- but an eternity to us!) my husband’s health had deteriorated to the point of WTH (my cleaned up version of WTF!) If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I would not believe that one day you go for a plane ride for tacos and a month later you need a wheelchair to get in and out of a cancer center. I will probably never get over the shock of it all and I feel like a computer spitting out words when I speak them to family members and friends to try and explain the unexplainable.

How does this happen? Do we explain away our symptoms? “Well I’m not as young as I used to be.” “The heat just kicked my ass out there!” “My back hurts- must have been the way I slept.” “Wow- that pizza didn’t sit too well.” “Something I ate gave me terrible indigestion!” Tums here I come.

Sound familiar? Well that is also what happens when you have a cancerous tumor larger than a golf ball in your chest spreading cancer cells to your bones and liver, as it turns out, at least in Roger’s case. We were advised to get his affairs in order.

We worked out the best plan and the best care for Roger with a team of Doctors and nurses, but we don’t know much more beyond what I have explained. His follow up with the Oncologist is too little, too late. Perhaps a written report or a telephone conference because Roger is too weak for me to get him to an appointment. There will be no falling on my watch. He will remain at home with my help and the kind and caring people of Hospice until whenever comes.

So for now my friends, we appreciate your thoughts and prayers to keep Roger as comfortable as can be, but Hospice is assisting me with his home health care for this new kind of journey.

I wonder if he will fly over or go by way of six wheels down? It’s anyone’s guess, but he got to do both while he lived here. Ten years of exploring this country and seeing things that both of us, as children, could only have imagined- wasn’t so bad. Live with no regrets because we never know when tomorrow’s too late. I still have the signed application for a handicap tag for Roger’s truck that we never had time to get at the BMV. Life changes in an instant…