Between The Miles - A Daughter's Perspective

It Wasn't About the Bride

     I know I'm not unique in thinking that the time between a couple's engagement and the actual wedding day is stressful. People travel through various doubts, questions, and frustrations even within the closest of families and couples. In my case, my engagement to Jeffrey Peek marked the beginning of the most tumultuous time of fear, doubt, cautious hope, endless prayer, and yes, love. 

     On Thanksgiving Day, 2001, mere hours after being proposed to, my new fiancé and I were at my parents' house sipping celebratory Champaign. That was when I first heard my parents discussing a lump they'd found in the side of my father's neck, just below his right ear. I vividly remember his reflection in the sliding glass door while my mother used her stone fingers to prod around his neck. I was laughing at his crinkled face as he tolerated her not-so-gentle jabbing. If he knew then that he was in real danger, he didn't lead on and I didn't sense it. Those days before his diagnosis were the few that I took for myself to feel special and bridal, and I wouldn't feel that way again until the day that I tried to race down the altar.

     My father recalled during the year before his cancer diagnosis, he had been struggling in his running performance; in training runs, at races, and in his recovery time after a race. The signs of disease back then had been subtle, and most people he spoke to about it argued that his performance frustrations were simply side effects of getting older. There were other signs though like the constant clearing of his throat. I thought about it and I couldn't remember a time when my father wasn't clearing his throat before he spoke, during a meal, or even just sitting and watching television. I always thought it was just a habit of his, but now I know it can be a symptom of the type of cancer that he had.

     Squamous cell carcinoma was the official diagnosis the Oncologist gave him, cancer that had originated in his tonsils with symptoms like; difficulty and/or pain when swallowing, lumps in the neck and even bad breath. His cancer, when discovered, was stage four, the most complicated stage because the doctors believed the cancer had spread to surrounding areas of the throat and to an unknown number of lymph nodes. The initial prognosis was death within months, maybe a year, and he was told to get his affairs in order. Here I was about to get married, beginning what was supposed to be a glorious time in my life but instead, it was a cruel tug-of-war between joy of becoming a wife, and the devastating sorrow of my father having months to live. 

     In the months that followed the cancer diagnosis, it seemed the bad news kept crashing over my family in endless waves that barely gave us time to catch our breath. (I promise to go into further detail of his cancer later in this book, but here is a general time line of events.) He had surgery on the 23rd of May 2001; radical neck dissection, to cut out as much of the cancer as they could find, starting at the tonsils and working outward to cut out the cancer for as long as his vitals would allow them to operate or until he died on the table. He didn't die on the operating table. Shortly after surgery he returned to work and started radiation treatments five days a week to his mouth and throat, neck and shoulder. To everyone's shock, he rallied himself and paced (ran with) his friend, Suzie Leon, foe the last thirty-eight miles of the 2002 "Western States 100 Miles Endurance Run" which took place the last weekend of June. 

     My father said, "It's a miracle that I was able to run that day because the next week of radiation treatments completely devastated my body. If the race had been one week later, I wouldn't have been able to do it at all. Thinking about it, that was the last good run I had in me for a really long time."

     The important thing to realize here is, most people didn't know how bad things really were for him because he seemed to defy all odds and kept a pace that made it seem he was almost unfazed by it all. Those first couple of months, he looked strong on the outside and everyone would comment that he looked good! He went to work every single morning, would work a half-day and then head to his radiation treatments. He still tried to run where and when he could, and even did what he could to help plan for the wedding. My dad and a priest arranged the date at the church for my wedding day and once my mother chose the reception site, my father alone chose the menu. Going through cancer, he was the strongest man I'd ever seen and it was an award-winning performance, because he was in fact, burning alive.