No Foolin'

My husband is dead. No April Foolin'. Oh, how I wish it were just a cruel joke.

April Fool's Day 2005
It was a normal day, not really all that memorable for the majority of the day. It was a Friday. Brian came home from school and we trickled in, just as usual. We took the girls to their dad's for the weekend, then had plans to take Tye and go out for dinner. We were driving, just the three of us, when Brian's jovial chit chat changed its tune. The words are seared in my mind.

I have something to tell you.

I could tell by the look on his face that he wasn't going to say that we had won the lottery. I would say that everything ran through my mind, but he didn't hesitate and gave me no chance to let my mind take off.

Something is wrong with my leg.

All I really remember from my response was sheer panic...something like what?

I'm not sure.

This is not funny. April Fool's!

I wouldn't joke about this, I'm serious.

I think all the blood drained out of me at that moment.

He continued with how his day had gone. He was teaching class when he felt a twinge along the inside of his left thigh, not real painful, but noticeable. When he had the chance, he had gone down and talked to the nurse about it, and they took a look. They could feel a lump or hard spot or mass of some sort just above the knee along the inside of the thigh. It also had a funny tint to it. She felt he should have it looked at, especially if it changed any.

Back to the van...I told him to take me home, that I wanted to see it right that second. We went home and by then, it had an ashen look. I could feel the mass as well.

The the naivety set in. It never crossed my mind that it was melanoma. How odd...wonder what that is...

By the time we went to bed that night, it was taking on a purplish hue, and by the morning, it was concord grape, probably 8 in. x 5 in. I called Dr. Runez on Monday and he went right away to see him. Obviously the bruising indicated some blood. He sent Brian for an xray and MRI, which both showed he had a blood clot. Dr. Runez thought it odd that Brian would have a blood clot, and sent us back to Brian's oncologist (Dr. Miller) in Columbia to be safe.

Later the next week, Dr. Miller checked him out and decided we should investigate this "blood clot". He had surgery during the last week of April. He hadn't even been in surgery that long when Dr. Miller asked to talk to us (Brian's parents were with us). He didn't hesitate.

Brian got along well in surgery, he is doing fine. What I found was not a blood clot, it is melanoma.

There it was, that nasty word that hid out for a while, then crept its way back into our vocabulary. How do you know?

I know. I have seen a lot of melanoma, and it is definitely melanoma, black. I just know. We will do pathology and we can see what we are dealing with. He continued. The bruising is from 2 large melanomas that burst. I can feel several other masses up the inside of his leg. We are talking about chemotherapy. It was then that Dr. Miller set us up with Dr. Anderson for a consult the next week.

I went in to see Brian in the recovery room. He had his eyes closed. I sat down next to him, I could not stop crying. He opened his eyes and said, Dr. Miller told me its melanoma and I have to do chemotherapy. And then he just started to cry. I just put my arms around him and we cried together. It was one of the saddest moments of my life.

And the rest is history, literally.