It sucks even worse when that news is about a dear friend.
I and a bunch of other people were invited by a friend to shoot clays today. I showed up and there were a MESS of people there. We all loaded up and went shooting, we had 6 manual clay launchers, and two electrical ones. We must have went through 8 boxes of clays.
When it was starting to get on in the evening, and cooling off, Jeff asked everyone to put up their shotguns, and meet him by the fire.
When everyone was there, we noticed that none of his immediate family had gone to shoot clays with us, but were are the fire. Then Jeff let it out.
We had noticed that his back had been bothering him all day, and he was taking some kind of medication, but thought nothing of it as he is a doctor. What he told us put it all together.
The cancer he had as a child had resurfaced about two months ago. This time, rather than being in one place and fairly treatable, his body is riddled with it, and he has a huge mass intertwined with his spine and spinal cord. He showed everyone a print out of the MRI image, and told everyone that there was nothing to be done this time. That he was ready to go, and that he and his family had everything lined out. He said that they had taken a biopsy of the cancer in his back, and kept it in the lab to "grow" it under controlled circumstances. It was doubling in mass every three days.
Literally Jeff invited everyone out to the farm to have a good time with him, and to allow him to say his goodbyes. He and every other doctor in the area is estimating that he has 3 days before it paralyzes him, and another 2-3 before it kills him.
The only treatment option he has, is a gamma knife to keep it from paralyzing him before it kills him.
It was strange how calm he was. He really had accepted hit, even his kids and wife have accepted it. He is going to be addressing the church tomorrow.
This man was truly one of the few that would be there whenever you called, loved helping everyone, and was a stranger to no one. Luckily, he has a large health insurance policy, so his wife and kids will be taken care of.
Its all just starting to sink in, but the more I think about it, in the last few weeks, I had noticed he was acting more and more strange, to talk to him about it today, you would think nothing was wrong, and he was really bad at pulling a prank. I am hoping for the best, but have to be realistic about this.