Torch, Summer 1999

I I l The doctor wanted me to go immediately to the hospital to have a CAT scan done. He called the hospital when I was still in the office, and when they said they didn't have any openings, his response was, "We need to get her in today- we'll just have to squeeze her in." So then I knew that there was some urgency involved. I was still thinking though, "This is going to be something that they can treat; it is not going to be a problem." The CAT scan was done about 1:00 that afternoon. At about 4:30, the doctor called me and said, "Donna, there are many lesions in your lung." I said, "OK, what are lesions?" He said, "They are tumors, and they look to be cancerous. You need to get in touch with a surgeon and start the process to decide what type and if it is for sure cancer." So, I went from cold to pneumonia, from pneumonia to asthma, and from asthma to lung cancer in one day. Jon: When confronting this kind of thing, you read voraciously to find out anything that you can. Unfortunately, the things we read were often disturbing. We thought at first that perhaps lung cancer is not that serious. But as we read, we discovered that lung cancer has no cure rates statistically. There are only survival rates. Only 17 percent of the people that have lung cancer survive beyond five years. That was devastating. I can remember reading that while Donna was unconscious, while she was taking chemo, and she was out because of the drugs they gave her. I thought, "How am I going to tell Donna this?" I decided to wait for the right time, but what is the right time to tell your wife she has an incurable disease? Through a process of events, Donna eventually found out. I came home one day and she was reading a book that I had gotten from the library. She said, "Do you realize how serious lung cancer is?" And I said, "Yeah, I do." God made that the way for her to find out so I wouldn't have to break it to her. Lung cancer is very unusual for a non-smoker. Even for a smoker to get the type of lung cancer that Donna has before age 50 is highly unusual, and the average age is 68. It baffles the doctors as to why she has it, and they don't have a clue, nor do we. This first part ofthe story was initially presented in 1994, shortly after Donna's diagnosis. We pick up the story four years later, as the Purples again spoke to the College family. Jon: The date of our first presentation [was] November 16, 1994. At that point, we were very pleased because it appeared Donna was going to be well enough to enjoy Christmas 1994. That was very uncertain when she was diagnosed in July of that same year. Christmas 1998 is the fifth Christmas that we [will] celebrate since Donna's diagnosis. Donna loves this time of the year. If we could have it right now, the Christmas tree would be up at this very moment. Realizing that the average life span of a person Torch 5