In the same sense that necessity is the mother of invention, it is amazing what you can learn or accomplish when you are presented with a set of circumstances that may not be appealing. In my particular case I learned as I sat in my seat on the flight back to Phoenix that all you need to do to get a row of seats all to yourself is to put on a surgical mask and sit in the aisle seat. People walk by you as if you have an emerging case of the coodies. They quickly move by just hoping not to catch whatever this guys seems to have. I’m going to have to buy a case of these things.
Of course, the reason that I ventured to Columbus this weekend was to see my good friend Terry Quinn. As you might remember, I viewed this trip with an air of anticipation, but also one of concern. My real fear was that this would be the last time I would ever get to see Terry. Certainly when I got to the hospital, my gravest concerns were met.
It was 10 in the morning and Terry was alone in his room sleeping. The full head of air was gone replaced by a thin patchy one that was snow white. Terry was prematurely gray and had always dyed it. He decided to stop doing that a year or so ago, but seeing him there like that made me more than unsettled. After talking to him on the phone during the week, I was afraid that he didn’t have much time left.
Shortly after 10:15 a doctor entered the room and woke him. After a brief discussion, Terry noticed me and smiled somewhat weakly as he struggled to stay awake. We spoke for a little bit before he fell back asleep in mid sentence. It continued this way for the first hours, but he gradually began to become more alive as we started talking more.
Terry has been fighting prostate cancer now since last summer. He has undergone more tests and therapies than I can count. As he laid there, he had more tubes running in and out of him than God ever intended. Yet, as the day wore on, he continued to perk up and even joke with me.
By mid day, the transformation was amazing. He not only was sitting up, but he had that old sparkle in his eyes. We talked about everything under the sun from disco lessons to the days of using the telephones on the tables to try to meet women at Max and Erma’s on ladies night. Those of you not from the area or just too dog gone young to remember, but Max and Erma’s is a Columbus based chain of restaurants that has been around for years. They used to have telephones on each table that would allow you to call any table in the place to start up a conversation.
Sadly at the time, Terry and I talked more about calling the women than actually calling them. It makes for a great story, but we spent more time scoring while playing Space Invaders than scoring with women. I think that drove us to being lasting friends more than anything. It didn’t matter if we accomplished our stated goals, we always had fun.
Today was no different. Even though both of us have our personal battles with cancer, none of that mattered, we were back together talking about better days. We did that for almost ten hours as the day passed rather quickly. But as the hours passed, I realized just how wrong I was about Terry’s fate. He still had a level of fight in him that I couldn’t read over the telephone.
He was, in fact, starting a new round of chemotherapy today. It would be a pill a day that wouldn’t be as invasive as others he had tried, but it did give a level of hope that I didn’t have when I arrived. The fact that both Terry and the doctors felt that there still was some level of hope made me feel that maybe all of the prayers that everyone has been sharing was not only doing good things for me but also for Terry. This certainly isn’t any guarantee that he will ever leave the hospital, but it and his attitude gives me a level of hope that I didn’t have when I got there. Maybe God can come up with one more miracle.
I did well all day to keep the tears away until about an hour before I left. I knew leaving would be hard and as the time drew near, I started to well up. Not an “Old Yeller” flow of tears, but more than I wanted to do while I was still there. It did, however, get me down the road that I needed to go.
One of the problem with being a guy, we sometimes find it hard to say what we should to our friends and family. I finally got the courage to tell Terry what his 30 years of friendship had meant to me. He had certainly made a difference in my life and I wanted him to know it. I just hope that I will get another chance to tell him the same things in person in the future.
I’m sure the people around me wonder why the guy in the mask now has tears in his eyes. It’s probably best that I wrap things up before it becomes a full gusher. Over the next few days, I will talk more about the transplant and the next steps. Keep the prayers coming.
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