Had I not known him with my own eyes and experience; I wouldn't believe what I am telling you. Patrick is a modern day JOB. At present this man is toothless, missing a leg, is wired, screwed, and scarred--and he hasn't been to war. Not in the traditional sense. As we speak, he is resting after a biopsy to the tail bone. Last Thanksgiving, they found a cancerous tumor(squameous cell carcinoma), the size of a tennis ball, in his neck. They removed it and all of his salivary and surrounding glands. He was in surgery for six hours, and the day after I came to visit him in the hospital, he was sitting up in a chair, making jokes with his sister and mom. Later that week, all his teeth were pulled. They were about to give him radiation, and necrosis of the jaw and/or infection to bone may have been a probabilty had he not had them removed. I don't know if any of you have had one tooth pulled, that can be uncomfortable. But having the top row done first, then go back a few days later and get the bottom row pulled? He said it was like getting face run over by a truck and then having to choose to go back and experience it all over again.

He was to have 33 radiation treatments and chemo with herbatux once a week. I get squeamish just talking about it. His treatments started out without a hitch. But as the treatments accumulated the chemo made him break out in boils.(Talk about biblical) The radiation put him in the hospital with a stomach tube. Radiation, well, the name alone is horrifying. But if you sit in that back room with a patient waiting to have this hard plastic webbed helmet attched so tight to their face that it leaves waffle marks when he comes out, and hear the decompression sound of the radiation chamber opening, it's enough to make anyone faint. He said you could see smoke rising from your body and the smell of burning flesh. People would scream, while inside that chamber. He would have to see people that were at the tail end of treatment, so burned and drugged, I just don't know how he faced it day after day. The mouth and throat get so raw, and even if you could swallow, the taste of metal and plastic makes you nauseous, not to mention nauseousness from all the poisons put into the body. The sad part is that all of this is not unusual. Countless people undergo the same brutal treatment every day. And they are really alone. I tried to be there as much as I could. His sister stayed with him, and helped fight the insurance company that cancelled his insurance mid-treatment. They ultimately lost the insurance battle but he was able to get on medicaid, thank God.

Speaking of God, how does one have faith in a time like this? That is what is so amazing about this man. He still has faith. "This ain't my first rodeo" he would say. And it isn't-- he's been in and out of hospitals his whole life. Perhaps that is what makes him so seemingly comfortable in a hospital setting, joking with the nurses. One nurse after the intial neck surgery, came into the room and relayed this story: The doctor was checking normal movements in the mouth and jaw and asked him to pucker. The doctor said "pucker" while demonstrating with his lips. Pat turned his head and said to the nurses, "I didn't know he was that way".

I'd never met a Texan before and Patrick fit's the stereotypical bill. Really rough around the edges with a "tough-as-nails"cowboy attitude. This Hercules, as he liked to call himself, said each time he had to face the possibility of death , "Don't worry baby, I already have it beat. I'm going to come out on the other side of this." And he always does. Once the radiation was over, he still had to get chemo, because they had to stop it once he had a stomach tube. That man, tube still in stomach, was working 20 hours a week in 90-100 degree heat as a master gardener. He has the "mind over matter" concept honed to a fine art and a will of steel to have endured his life.

In the next few months or years however long it takes, I will attempt to tell his story. Please excuse any grammatical errors or typos, I'm not a writer. But I feel his story must be told.