ANOTHER SUNRISE, ANOTHER STEP FORWARD

Genesis 1:14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament…..and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.

Tom Rodabaugh has leukemia. It’s in remission but he’s been assured that one day it will return.

It could be 2030. It could be next week.

So he carries it around like a bad penny at the bottom of his pocket. He never knows when it might turn up.

Tom has owned a veteran’s seat at the KSC-Grand Island sales counter for nearly 24 years. His specialty is hydraulics. The friendships he has formed with customers throughout the community are legion and lasting.

He’s 59 years old. Seeing him streak down the highway on his Harley or splash through a shallow, sandy branch of the Platte River in his Jeep, you wouldn’t know he had a care in the world. Just talking to him over the counter, you get that same impression.

But believe me, he cares.

“I’ve learned how to wake up each day and be grateful to see the sun come up,” he says. “I certainly believe in a greater Being.”

He was diagnosed in the summer of 2006. It was one of those quirky hand of fate diagnoses that came about while being treated for something far and apart from cancer.

We’ve all heard about those. A guy walks in to his doctor’s office with a broken toe and comes out with six months to live.

He says he was scared when his doctor confirmed the leukemia diagnosis. He was suddenly afraid of dying. Before, that wasn’t something he’d spent a whole lot of thought on.

Tom’s oncologist is affiliated with the National Cancer Institute. He discussed with Tom the possibility of his getting on board with an experimental drug program endorsed by the NCI.

First, he would need to meet several physical criteria to even be considered for participation. Tom underwent the necessary examinations and he passed. He was accepted.

What this experimental program does is to redesign the chemotherapy process. Whereas many cancer patients receive chemo on a week on/week off rotation, this procedure called for the mix of chemo drugs to be administered aggressively, three times a week each week.

For a year.

At one point, during the course of this regimen, an experimental drug began being administered during the fourth week by needle.

“The idea behind this,” Tom says, “is to aggressively flush the system, more so than a routine chemotherapy process. The fourth drug, the experiment, is the follow-up that really goes after the bad cells in the hope of putting the cancer in remission for a period 10-20 years longer than normal treatment would.”

He didn’t lose his hair nor did he experience the nausea that normally accompanies chemotherapy. “But I was extremely tired. All I could do was go home and lie down.”

Tom looks more robust and his energy has returned, but he still continues to pace himself.

And while that year of treatment has been a few calendars ago, it didn’t stop there. Since then, Tom has had to report yearly for a bone marrow extraction. So far, the results have assured his doctor that the cancer is quiet.

“I have one extraction to go,” Tom says, “and if it’s clear, the doctor will be satisfied that this treatment has worked.”

In the meantime, Tom works. And he plays. He lives his life.

“The one thing they told me going into this experimental treatment was, ‘there’s no guarantees’.”

But each day that the sun comes up for Tom, he’s satisfied.

Recently, Tom Rodabaugh participated in a NCI video exploring the cutting edge treatments that are adding hope and extra years to the lives of cancer patients.

Click here to view the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG1TCZKP_58