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Chapter 1
EARLY SIGNS OF RELAPSE
The phone is ringing, it is the middle of October 2008, the caller I.D. displays Dustin as the caller; glad I’m getting a call from my son. When I answer, he sounds panicked and says, “I am in a grocery store with Corey (his brother) and Kerry (Corey’s wife) and I can’t find them, I think they left me.” I reassure him that Corey and Kerry would not do that. About that time, I hear Corey in the background asking what is wrong, Corey gets on the phone, and I tell him what just happened. He says he will keep a very close eye on his brother through the rest of the weekend. On Monday, I report the incident to Dustin’s oncologist (cancer specialist) and I am told to watch him for any other unusual symptoms. Over the next few weeks, everything seems normal.
Two months later, in December 2008, Dustin is coming home during his second year of college to enjoy the holidays. He is involved in an automobile accident at a stop light, phones home and Phil, his father, and I speak with him. He says everyone involved is fine and the police officer is being very helpful. The police officer asks Dustin to move his car off the road and Dustin says, “I don’t think it will start.” The hood is pushed up into the front window, but it is a 1990 older model car, a durable car. We purchased this car model for each of our boys when they started to drive.
Corey’s car had proven durable as he tried destroying it when he was 16, hoping for a new car. He even took it mudding in a pond. It also was involved in a crash after which his father hooked it up with a log chain on one end and chained it to a tree, hooked it up on the other end with a log chain to the tractor and straightened the car back out. Phil then handed Corey a rattle can of spray paint and the car was able to be driven once again. Corey could not believe it! Dustin was nine years old at the time.
Now, in 2008, when we arrive with our car, pickup and trailer at Dustin’s accident, we go
to put Dustin’s car up on the trailer, pull onto the loading ramp and one ramp breaks. With that, Phil says, “Everyone stand back.” With only one loading ramp, he gets a run at it and ramps the car onto the trailer. Everyone’s mouth just drops open, Dustin’s response is a low toned voice comment of “uh-huh,” the car is tied down and I follow the truck and trailer with Dustin in our car.
We are almost out of town when Dustin says, “I have a headache. I think I better get checked out.” So we pull up to the hospital’s ER (Emergency Room) to do just that. The ER doctor comes in and just looks at him. We request an X-ray, but he is an arrogant ass and won’t allow one. He insists that Dustin is fine, pushes down on the top of Dustin’s head and asks if his neck hurts. I could have ripped him apart, but I stay composed. Over the years, dealing with different personality types and levels of professionalism within the medical world, you learn to try to pacify some doctor’s egos and how to ask to get what you want and what you think the patient needs until convinced otherwise.
I proceed to tell him Dustin’s medical history. Again, he is unconcerned and sends us
out the door. As we are leaving the hospital ER, I have a sickening feeling in my stomach.
I feel that Dustin needs an X-ray of his head, and I have a flashback of what happened at the grocery store a few weeks prior. I think to myself, “Is this the beginning of a relapse?” An X-ray would at least give us comfort, to take a look and make sure Dustin’s brain cancer
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