I guess it's my turn to light a candle in here - I just got some bad news about a former co-worker. He had been battling throat cancer for a long time, he even went into remission, but then I guess it came back. He had surgery, chemo, radiation, the works. I didn't hear anything from him for awhile, but I knew he was generally doing poorly. I had heard he couldn't walk more than like 10 feet without getting tired so he stayed in his room all day every day. He was like that for awhile but seemed to be hanging in there, and he kind of got pushed to the back of my mind. For some reason though yesterday I started thinking of him and wondering how he was doing, was going to drop him a line and say hi. But I just heard that he passed away! It's very sad. We used to work closely together and he had to stop working because of his cancer, but he kept telling me he wanted to get back to work soon - and he would check up on me too, to see how I was doing - he told me he felt really badly about me being ill and that he was worried about me (!!) because my IBD had first reared its ugly head just before he got sick, so we were the two people at work always going to doctor appointments back then. He was a nice person and it's really hard to think that he's gone. I just pulled up his obituary but haven't been able to read it yet, and it hasn't really sunk in yet. I'm just in shock right now.
If anyone reading this is a smoker - please, quit! My co-worker was a life-long smoker, and he used to brag that he was healthy as a horse and hadn't even been to the doctor in decades because he was so healthy. Well, that wasn't truly the case, and throat cancer snuck up on him. By the time he went to the doctor for it (his voice was a little hoarse, that was his only symptom), it was already stage 3. This guy was only in his mid 50s when he died. So please, don't smoke - even if you think you're fine, cancer can sneak up on you.
