Breast Cancer Caregiver

At the time we were both forty-four years old. I was a colonel in the U.S. Army serving as an instructor at the Command and General Staff College located at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, which is in northeast Kansas. Barbara was a housewife and the mother of our two sons, Thomas Robert and Jason Michael. Both of the boys were students at the University of Kansas, in Lawrence, about fifty miles to the southwest. Leavenworth was also my hometown. As such my parents, two brothers, and two sisters all lived in or around the Kansas City metro area.

When we received the confirmation that a recent biopsy was indeed cancerous, I had a very poor understanding of cancer, let alone this particular one that seemed to strike only females. I had no idea how prevalent the disease was among women in the United States. However, with a little research I was quick to learn that in the United States, one in every nine women in their lifetime would develop breast cancer. I was shocked at the high statistics and decided that I needed to educate myself about the disease and what kinds of treatment options were available.

I searched the libraries and found several books written by women about their own experiences and the experiences of other women, but I found nothing written by a man. It was then that I thought I should start keeping a daily journal that one day I might turn into a book to help other men facing the same challenge. The journal became my focal point for each day. I chronicled all the events from December 1992 until Barbara's death in August 1994. I found that the journal became very important during the almost two years we spent battling cancer for a couple reasons.