Scott, very few of us know what to say in a case like yours. I consider myself to be one of the majority as I don’t know what to say.

I don’t know how you’re feeling. I couldn’t even venture a guess. I did know someone who knew her version of what you’re going thru.

My wife wasn’t a Bulldog by degree. When it came to that, I guess I was Bulldog for both of us. While she doesn’t have a brick, she was my foundation. She had more Bulldog fight in her than anybody I know.

In early 2005, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She beat it.

In late 2014, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. She didn’t beat it this side of Heaven.

She was a fighter though. Surgery wasn’t an option since hers was found late. She went thru weekly chemo. We saw some improvement after a few months so then she went thru a daily seven week radiation regimen. Radiation hadn’t been an option at first either. Even thru all that, most people she interacted had no idea what she was going thru. Most people just saw the caring, dynamo who walked too fast, talked too fast and rarely missed a day of work.

But about the time of spring game in 2015, she started going downhill. At the time, she didn’t see it as a hurdle she couldn’t get over. Even though the odds were long, she had cleared so many hurdles in the past and thought how she was feeling would improve.

She usually didn’t go to Tech games with me. Maybe just the occasional homecoming or a game where we were out of town and coming back thru Ruston at the right time or way back to some State Fair games when we were dating. But she offered to go with me to the Spring 2015 game. I guess I should have known something then but I told her she needed to rest and not to worry about me going by myself. It was just another trip down to Ruston A week later, she wasn’t up to going to a Relay for Life event (that was a cause near and dear to her heart for many reasons).

The Monday after RFL weekend, she was admitted to the local hospital. We still thought it was something called radiation pneumonitis and she would respond to steroids. After a week, she was transferred to one of the larger hospitals in the state to continue treatment and to be in a larger hospital if things took a turn for the worse. While there were times when it looked like she was making progress, after about two weeks in the larger hospital, I was introduced to the word palliative care. Even with a reasonably large vocabulary, I had to look that one up.

On a Sunday, she was transported to a hospice facility back where we lived. I think they thought she would be with us longer, but she wasn’t the same after that ambulance trip. I don’t know if it was something they gave her to tolerate the trip, something that happened during the trip or just the natural progression of the disease, but she wasn’t as alert as she had been during the stays at the two hospitals.

To bring my post to a close, on a Wednesday afternoon about 5:00 pm in May of 2015, I was holding my wife’s left hand and our son was holding her right hand when she took her last earthly breath. We had been married 30 years, 6 months and 10 days.

Scott, again, I don’t know what to say to you, but from what I’ve been through, I know something to tell those close to you. It’s the same thing I told that son I mentioned earlier when I told him about his Momma’s lung cancer. I told him doctors don’t know it all. They’re not innkeepers. They can’t say exactly when any of us will checkout. I told him his Momma was going to try to beat it and the Lord might let her. I told him that whatever happens, don’t not do or not say something that at some point in the future you might regret not having said or done when you had the chance.

We thought we’d have a little more time than we did and there are a few things I wish I would have said and done that I didn’t.

Fair winds and following seas in your journey Scott.