This One Is A Tough One
This was my friend, and fellow long term Hodgkin’s Survivor, Danny. And just like many others before him, his body just could not take any more. I have written many times about other survivors I have known over the years, but Danny was a personal friend that I have known over fifteen years, so saying goodbye to Danny is going to be a lot tougher.
Like I said, I first met Danny over fifteen years ago, at a Johnny Rockets restaurant for lunch in Manhattan. Danny was having his first appointment with Memorial Sloan Ketterin’s Cancer Center Cancer Survivorship Clinic, of which I had already been a patient three years by then. He was in NYC with his wife, though she was not with for lunch or the appointment, and his young daughter was back home in Texas.
Danny spent most of the initial time, trying to gather information from me, on what to expect with this “survivorship clinic” visit, like what questions should he ask, what can he expect to be done, and he did this by listening to what I had gone through over the years. Like many of us, once our bodies have begun going down the “late term side effects” from our cancer treatments path, we don’t feel well. Worse, we feel alone. No one, even our personal doctors have a hard time understanding what we are going through. But sitting down face to face, with another survivor, or interacting on social media with thousands more, that is powerful. That is understanding. Better yet, we know we are not alone, even if those around us do not understand.
I would get to know Danny over the years. We both would go through difficulties with non-cancer related events, such as divorce, I offering him encouragement as he fought for his father’s rights to be able to see and spend time with his daughter.
Danny was definitely a man of faith, he never hid that. He was constantly on the recieving end of my “you’re going to need a little more than faith to get you through this” when it came to his health. So I would have to constantly prod him when it was time to seek medical help, and pray all he wanted on the way to the hospital. But the day he described to me, the EXACT symptoms that I experienced when I had my widow-maker blockage, I demanded that he get to the emergency room immediately. We both had extremely high doses of radiation to our chest, which is now known to cause major damage to the cardiac system. The main artery to my heart was blocked 90% (a widow-maker). His symptoms were exactly the same. And he too would be diagnosed with a widow-maker as well, undergo open heart surgery as I did, and lived to tell about it.
Danny could get quirky with me, so there would be times that he would put up a wall, to prevent talking about anything medical. He had a hard time accepting that this health emergency that he had was not just a one-off. There would be other things he had to watch out for, but that seemed to go against his putting faith in his supreme being. So we would occasionally bang heads, me getting on him to get seen, and him shutting me out. By this time, I felt like I was dealing with a little brother who needed a kick in the ass.
But Danny always did Danny. We survivors all carry ourselves in ways that make us feel that we are still living the way we want. He would survive his divorce proceedings, and be able to continue seeing his daughter under normal situations. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked for him. He loved going for walks on this one set of railroad tracks through the mountainside. It had to be so peaceful.
Danny was the real deal with how he handled adversity. Nothing was going to stand in his way. He attended a professional baseball game, and was hit square in the eye with a line drive foul ball. In the emergency room, he was cracking pirate jokes, even as it was clear he was going to lose his eye. He was already on his way to plans to overcome that handicap, including driving.
Danny would talk about his military experiences, including when he was battling Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He had also dealt with some injuries including one head injury. But personally speaking, the military let him down, as did the VA in his later and final years.
As I had warned him, Danny’s health would continue to experience new issues from his survivorship. All the while, Danny continued trying to be Danny, literally giving his shirt of his back to help someone in need. But as his health issues got more complicated, so did the ability to get him help, either by his refusal, or the lack of experience of his doctors. And if that was not bad enough, instead of forcing him to remain, Danny would almost always check himself out, against medical advice, only to fall into more difficult and complicated situations, especially when it came to driving, and falls. At times, he could be his own worst enemy, because Danny wanted to be Danny, and he was not letting anyone, including me get in his way. It was so frustrating.
I have been described by some of my fellow survivors as a good friend to Danny. But honestly, I feel I fell short. I can use the excuse self-preservation, but there came a time I actually had to shut him out, because Danny was going through something, I would only find out later, that was causing him mentally to spin out. And it was his actions online, that ended up putting me at risk with scams and fraud, which I had warned him against. Whether he was having some sort of breakdown, or whether it was mixed with his faith, trust in everyone is the only way you can help everyone, I had to step away. I was still there if he actually wanted help, which was usually never the case.
We got together again at a conference for Hodgkin’s survivors. And it was great seeing my friend again. He was doing okay, still struggling with his health, but he seemed happy. And it was nice getting to see him meet so many others, as I have had the opportunity to do over the years.
In recent years, and weeks, I know he had several medical issues he was dealing with, and though I have only heard of his passing through 3rd hand, as well as what happened, I am not going to share that as I cannot confirm it. It is enough that I knew what Danny had gone through with his life and his health. And that I truly hope that my friend Danny is no longer in pain, and is in peace resting.
You were one of a kind Danny. You will be missed by more than you ever realized.
Paul's Heart 