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Aug 29, 2003 This week marks the 22nd anniversary of my husbands death. Every year at this time I relive the nightmare of watching him die from melanoma, the black cancer and radiation poisoning. I dont think the memory will ever leave me. It is becoming more vivid, now, in the light of the announcement, today, that North Korea wants to be recognized as a nuclear nation. My husband was born with a huge birthmark on his chest. It should have been taken care of and removed when he was young, but it wasnt. It should have been taken care of and removed when he went into the military, but it wasnt. Many times over the years, I had said to him. Why dont you have that hideous black thing removed?. His standard response to me was Are you the doctor? Before we moved to the D.C. area, a doctor at Kaiser Permanente in Sacramento advised that he have the thing removed when it begins to grow. Yes, that doctor should have known better. Three and a half years later the thing began to grow and he was diagnosed with a malignant melanoma. The black thing was surgically removed but it was too late, the roots had already spread to the lymph nodes. He lived four and a half years after the initial surgery. There was another surgery done under his left arm when we lived in Denver, then he went into remission. Shortly after we moved to Yuma, AZ he began to complain about pain in his left arm which was misdiagnosed as tennis elbow. That was in September of 1980. He was in constant pain. After another set of x-rays were taken in February and he was re-diagnosed with bone cancer. The tumor had shown up on the fall x-ray but was missed. It was down hill from then on. We drove every three weeks to the University of Arizona Medical Center in Tucson where he was given chemotherapy. When these treatments failed to stem the spread of the malignancy, he was kept at the hospital and put on a program of radiation therapy. They overdosed him with radiation and burnt out his left lung and part of his colon, which required additional surgery. He was brought home to Yuma in early August as a terminal case. When my daughter and I no longer were able to care for him at home, he was taken to the local hospital where he died ten days later in the early morning hours of August 26th. 1981 on his 58th birthday. The last time I saw him alive, the upper party of his body was burnt black. His nurse told me they were praying he would go soon as all of the drugs in the world he was being given could not dull his excruciating pain. There was not a single part of his body that could be touched without him moaning in agony. Ill never know how I was able drove home from the hospital that night without killing myself or someone else. Numb with shock and horror, I fell into bed to be awakened at 2:30 a.m. the next morning with the call from the doctor telling me my husband had died. A friend of mine from the community theatre group I belonged to was working at the funeral home. He called the next day and asked, What the hell was done to your husband? His body looks like the photographs I have seen of the Hiroshima victims." The death certificate states the cause of death as malignant melanoma. That would have been the eventual cause, but the immediate cause, my friend told me, was radiation poisoning. Were we, as witnesses to his demise, given a chilling preview of the ultimate destruction of mankind? ------------ About the author: Bobbie Hart ONeill is a retired print media journalist, CSU-Sacramento, 74, with 40 years experience in the field. She has worked as a reporter, feature writer, columnist, public relations writer, magazine/newsletter editor and publisher. She is currently a freelance writer residing in Yuma, Arizona and has published a childrens book, written three screenplays and a novel. In addition, she is interested in civic affairs, politics, current events, ethnology and animals. Email Bobbie: bobbieo@digitaldune.net Comment on this column in the forum. Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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