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Cancer strengthens father, son bond By Kristin Bender
Oakland Tribune, Aug 26, 2005 by Kristin Bender, STAFF WRITER
Jim says he doesn't remember exactly where he was or what he was doing when he felt the lump on the left side of his neck under his jaw.
"It was about the size of a shelled peanut," he says, feeling his neck while sitting in his living room
It wasn't visible to anyone else, but Jim knew it was there. When his brother, a pharmacist who works for a company that makes cancer drugs, came to visit, he asked his advice.
"He said, 'You are such a hypochondriac. Why don't you just go have it looked at?'" Kaiser sent him for a biopsy, which came back negative. A doctor prescribed antibiotics in case it was some sort of infection. But when the pills were gone and the lump was still there, he went back to Kaiser.
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"This time they used a much bigger needle and for some much bigger biopsies," he says.
This was early June 2004 -- six weeks after he'd first felt the lump. A bone marrow aspiration -- the removal of a small amount of bone marrow fluid through a needle inserted into the pelvis bone -- was completed and tests were run.
Jim was in his law office when the phone rang on an early Friday afternoon. The doctor said his test results were back and there was "some bad news and some good news."
"We've determined what it is, and now we can start treatment," Jim remembers the doctor saying.
Jim sat still at his desk, a yellow steno pad staring at him. He scrawled "B-cell Lymphoma." He has kept the pad to this day.
In shock, Jim grabbed his jacket and headed home, where he would have to tell Jennifer.
"That was the most difficult thing I have done in my life to this point, ... to leave my office and go home to tell my dear wife that there was a new cancer patient in the family -- me," he says.
"It was very overwhelming to understand that there were two of us who might be going through chemotherapy. Two of us who might die," Jim says.
"When they told us about Porter's cancer and we started to see what we were up against, we were emotionally at rock bottom," Jim says.
What followed was six rounds of eight-hour chemo procedures for the next four months.
The chemotherapy seemed to be working. The lump, grown to the size of a golf ball, was shrinking. Slowly he regained his strength, appetite and zest for life.
Jim will finally do that Mono Lake bike ride.
"I survived cancer, I'm not nervous about anything anymore," he says.
For more information on the Light the Night Charity walks visit http://www.lightthenight.org. The walks will be in Walnut Creek, Menlo Park, Santa Rosa, San Francisco and San Jose in September and October.
''It was very overwhelming to understand that there was two of us who might be going through chemotherapy. Two of us who might die."
Jim Pixton
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