Marriage

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Until Death Do us part

My wife Cindy and I were married in July 1958. I still remember the ceremony as if it happened yesterday! Part of the ceremony had these words "through better or through worse until death do us part".

We enjoyed the better part mentioned in the ceremony for many wonderful years. Then things began to happen! Cindy discovered some lumps in her right breast. The doctor set up an appointment to have a mammogram of her right breast. She had been bothered with cyst in her breast before but we were still concerned that it may be something more serious.

After the mammogram was performed the Radiologist called my oldest daughter and me into a consultation room. The person who did the mammogram had made a mistake and had done a mammogram of her left breast so they had to do another mammogram on her right breast. The radiologist told us that the spots on the right breast were cysts and very rarely turned into a malignancy. On the other hand he told us that the left breast was the one to be worried about. He pointed to some small spots that looked like tiny specks. He told us that these spots usually indicated that a cancer was there. They had put a needle into the left breast to let the person who was going to do the biopsy know where to take the sample.

After several days of waiting to get the results of the biopsy my wife and I were sitting in the front room of our home near Bassfield, MS when the telephone rang. It was our surgeon from Baton Rouge calling to let us know that the biopsy from the left breast came back positive to cancer. Our world shattered!! He set up an appointment for us to come in and discuss possible treatments. .

He explained that the only viable treatment was surgery and that the cancer didn't appear to have spread. Did we want him to do a mastectomy or a lumpectomy? The decision was ours. He told us that with a cancer as small as the one in her breast that the survival rate after doing a lumpectomy was the same as a mastectomy without the disfigurement that occurred with a mastectomy. We decided to go with the lumpectomy.

After the surgery we were referred to a local Oncologist in Hattiesburg. He told my wife that if she had to have cancer that the type she had is the best kind to have. The cancer had not spread out of the milk duct and was the kind that could be treated with good results. He set her up for radiation treatment at the local cancer treatment center where she was to have radiation five days a week for six consecutive weeks with Saturdays and Sundays off to recuperate.

My time had come to take care of my wife as she had taken care of me for many years. Each day I had to drive her to Hattiesburg to the Cancer Center for her radiation treatment. As the treatments progressed her fatigue would increase. I learned very quickly those things I had taken for granted for many years was more strenuous than I had figured. House keeping, cooking, and all the other things that she had done now fell in my lap. I began to appreciate her more and more for the things she had been doing all these years. I didn't mind because she is the love of my life.

It has been several years since the cancer was diagnosed and removed. I am forever thankful for the providence of GOD for the mistake the technician made in doing a mammogram of her left breast. If it had not been for that mistake the cancer would have been undetected and only GOD knows what would have happened.

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