Heroes

Heroes

Everybody has one or more heroes in their lives. Someone they look up to for particular accomplishments from living life with outstanding character, displaying strengths others consider unattainable or even being a good cook.

One of the heroes in my life showed himself to be above the crowd in 1998 when he was diagnosed with carcinogenic melanoma. My husband, Billy Wayne, had a dark, suspicious mole, and when he finally got it checked, the report was not good.

Just hearing the word “cancer” on a diagnosis is scary for the person who’s affected as well as for his family.

To fully appreciate the quality of Billy’s achievement, you must understand a few things about him. For one thing, he loves to have something about which to complain. Now I’m not saying this about him to try to make him look bad, it’s kind of an endearing characteristic.

For example, having been a truck driver for a good portion of his life, he appreciates drivers who display good, consistent driving skills. We like to travel the highways and byways when we can and Billy makes it his job to critique the other drivers on the road — sometimes a challenge to listen to for the whole trip.

Well, enough about that. I just want to share a little of the reason I expected Billy to be a complainer about his cancer treatments.

Immediately following his diagnosis, he had to have a couple of surgeries. The first let us know to what degree his cancer was developed. It was a cutting-edge technology that identified affected lymph nodes. Biopsies were taken, and in the lab work that followed, cancer was tracked.

The next surgery was scheduled to remove the lymph nodes that carried Billy’s cancer. Recovery from the second surgery was much more difficult, but after a week or so, Billy was pretty close to getting back to normal — though most people would never call him normal in any way.

After surgery came decisions on what type of treatment Billy should take to be sure there was no cancer continuing in his body. We went to see his oncologist in Plano to learn of his treatment recommendations. Of course, at that time, we knew very little of what to expect. Our innocence didn’t last long.

Within a couple of weeks, he began interferon treatments. He went to the clinic every day to take massive amounts and then I had to get trained on how to administer the treatments at home so he could reduce his visits to a monthly schedule. It was a year-long regimen during which Billy was sick, sick, sick. On many of the days he wasn’t vomiting, he still tired easily, and in general just didn’t feel good.

We learned of Billy’s cancer in August just as our daughter was preparing for her senior year in high school. She had been a varsity volleyball player since her sophomore year and her volleyball career had become important to us as a family. We followed her through off-season, club volleyball as well as the intense schedule for the three months of high school play.

When it came to Jamie, who’s always been the apple of Billy Wayne’s eye, he put on his game face. He attended almost every games because he knew she’d be looking for him. Two times a week, he sat in a gymnasium somewhere in Texas, in hot and cold weather. He smiled and joked and tried to keep things normal for his daughter’s senior year in high school. She never knew the effort he had to undertake in order to be there and that’s the way he wanted it.

Even the night, during a football game half time, when we heard Jamie’s name announced as the 1998 homecoming queen, he was on the field as her escort.

I know how sick he was. I knew how badly he felt because I watched him. I’m the one who made him eat and made sure he drank plenty of water. I mopped his face after he upchucked over and over.

Through it all, he never complained. He took his lumps and never complained. He did what he felt he had to do for Jamie to enjoy her last year in high school and he never complained.

He’s my hero.