Video Transcript: Minister and Wife Tell Children About Pleural Mesothelioma Diagnosis

We went back home and told our kids, finally.... because we had not told our children. My oldest two did not take it very well at all. My baby.... I don’t think he really understood what was happening. When we got to the part that said "prolong life," that just took a damper, and it brought us all back to reality. And reality was he could die today or tomorrow. After telling my children, it took something out of me as a parent, and I know it did take something out of my husband also as a parent. I looked at my children, and I said to myself, my children are being robbed.... of their dad, not knowing what the end would be, because no one knows what the end will be. But knowing that Dr. Sugarbaker had said to us sitting there in that office: it would just prolong life.  He couldn’t guarantee us how long. In past statements and things that I had saw--papers that I had got off the web--it said 2 years, 3 years; nothing was long life. So that’s when I started to think about.... my kids asked a lot of question, questions that I couldn’t answer. Questions that he couldn’t answer. But, we told them that it would be okay, and we were going to go through this together. I think my daughter took it the hardest out of everything. My daughter was in her first year of college. She didn’t want to go back to school; she just wanted to stay there and watch her dad. They were really, really close... being that was my only daughter. Again, my baby, it really didn’t affect him them, but as time went on, it did. My oldest was trying to hold on to being the man now that he was. But it was hard for all of us. And I think as those times went on, because I knew in October he was going to have the surgery and I didn’t know whether or not he was going to live on the table or die. This is what was told to me.