ABSTRACT
The weekend before my cancer treatments began was filled with apprehension.
I was grateful to be surrounded by family and friends. Lindsay stayed until
Sunday afternoon when she and the Koppelmans both returned to La Crosse.
My spirits were also buoyed by a Sunday visit from my good friend John Shaw.
We have worked together for several years as facilitators of Parents in Partnership
groups at many communities in Wisconsin. The companionship of family and
friends was a good distraction while waiting for the treatment to start, but I
couldn’t stop worrying about possible nausea and vomiting from the chemo-
therapy. Because of the recent surgical stitches, the thought of retching my guts
over the toilet was not terribly appealing. It reminded me of a scene from a
movie Sheri and I had seen about a week before my diagnosis. Ironically, the
movie was The Bucket List, starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman,
where both actors played terminally ill cancer patients. In one scene, Nicholson’s
character is sick from his chemotherapy and violently vomits in the toilet of
his hospital room. When he stands up looking weak and haggard and stares
into the mirror, he says, “Just think, right now there is some lucky bastard who
is having a heart attack.” It seemed a real possibility that the side effects of my
treatments might be worse than the symptoms of my disease.
