Video Transcript: Pleural Mesothelioma Takes Toll on Minister and Family

We flew home, and we flew to Boston. We had an appointment with Dr. Sugarbaker. Dr. Sugarbaker did meet with Andrew, and he pulled out some of the fragments and also the tests that were done in Hawaii. He explained to him that unfortunately, the fragments of the mesothelioma had dropped off into his stomach lining and that they were moving rapidly. He also stated to us that at this time it was not wise to have another surgery back-to-back like that. Well, the first thing I said to Dr. Sugarbaker was, "Ok, so where does this leave us? What happens at this point?" He said, "Well, we have done pretty much everything that we can do." You just don’t know how I felt at the moment. It was like I could have ripped up the hospital. I could have ripped up everybody that said something to me. I mean it was just a flashback of my life from A to Z. Here I thought that I would be living with a mate happily ever after. The whole time Andrew really never said anything. I know that he was in deep, deep, deep thoughts. I was doing all of the talking at the time. We went back to the hotel in silence. He said, "Well Latanyta, do you want to go out and get something to eat?", but he didn’t talk about it; he didn’t want to talk about it. I couldn’t even eat. I didn’t know how to tell my kids. I didn’t even know how to tell myself. Dr. Sugarbaker never gave him a time or anything like that; he just said, "Go home," and he was going to give us some medicine. That was pretty much it. We flew back to Detroit to tell our family. My daughter: no, no way; my kids: uh-uh; me: no way. But every single day I could see it taking effect on my husband.