This is Vicki

This is my wife, Vicki. We snapped this photo of her in front of our house on Easter Sunday, 2004.

Three months earlier, on December 23rd, 2003 our lives changed forever. That day Dr. Ron DeMatteo at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan explained to us that he had determined that Vicki has cholangiocarcinoma (bile duct cancer).

Initially, we sought to fight this tumor and seek a cure. I remember the train ride home that evening from New York's Penn Station to Washington, DC we were in a state of shock. But, the next day, Christmas eve, we began to devlop a stategy. Through friends we learned of Dr. John Marshall at Georgetown University Hospital's Lombardi Cancer Center in Washington, DC. The next week we attended our first appointment at Lombardi and soon we began treatment, hopeful that we could beat this cancer.

Two and a half years have passed and Vicki has survived a very difficult journey. The many successive battles have led to a very long war, testing our will, our courage, our stamina, and our faith. The challenges most often involve enduring the physical pain and drain of chemoembolizations, endless chemotherapy treatments and computed tomography (CT) scans, and associated side effects. The battle not seen perhaps presents the greater challenge. Grief and anxiety sometimes seem so overwhelming.

In this blog I will relate the many experiences of our battle with cancer over the past few years. I will also provide some periodic updates on how Vicki is doing. At other times I may comment on something completely different because life is much more than cancer.