July Is Sarcoma Awareness Month: My Family's Story
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July Is Sarcoma Awareness Month: My Family's Story

Hope is all I can do, and hope is the best thing I can do.

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July Is Sarcoma Awareness Month: My Family's Story
ericdavisfoundation.org

My dad does not like doctors. I’m sure there are lots of people like him, people who grew up during a time where you only went to the doctor if you were sick, people who didn’t like the smell of a doctor’s office, people who didn’t like cold or gloved hands prodding every part of their body. My dad had no problem taking me or my brothers to the doctor for our yearly checkups and sore throats, but he never wanted to go himself. However, this didn’t become a problem until fall of 2011.

It began with a cough, but not a normal cough. It was raspy and downright horrible to listen to. Every time he retched and spat, everyone winced. It took my mom, her parents, my aunts, my other grandparents, and just about every friend of my dad’s my mom could get ahold of to convince him to go to our family’s doctor and have a check up.

The diagnosis was swift and assuring. Chronic asthma, something not quite life threatening, fairly manageable, something he could live with. But despite this, the doctor said he wanted to follow his gut and send my dad to have a scan of his chest, just to make sure everything else was alright.

That doctor's gut instinct turned out to be a piece of the little string of miracles that saved my dad's life.

When he went for that chest scan, the technician was horrified when she examined the image and realized she literally couldn’t find my dad’s lungs. Now, they didn’t disappear or fly out of his body, they were hiding behind something. And that something they were hiding behind changed our lives forever.

We later learned it was an angiosarcoma, a soft tissue cancer with a dismal survival rate of less than 30%. It is aggressive, rare (1% of adults get this cancer), and dangerous, as this type of tumor has constant contact with blood vessels and can spread at an alarming rate. The technician didn’t know this was happening, but she still wanted him in the hospital straight away.

My mom made a judgement call that day. She knew something was very wrong, and she knew her husband needed the very best care possible. So, she waited one frightening night, and then took my dad to Mount Sinai Hospital, which, I can tell you with total certainty, is full of angels.

One day, after a routine echocardiogram, he was frantically rushed to surgery because he was going into cardiac arrest (fluid from the tumor was filling his heart). The biopsy they took from the mass that day revealed his angiosarcoma.

A team of professionals descended upon my dad: a surgeon (Dr. Lee), an oncologist who happened to be an expert on angiosarcoma (Dr. Maki), and a flock of dedicated nurses and physician’s assistants, many of whom we still have a close relationship with today.

We were told he had a 50/50 chance, but we were determined to fight. Our treatment plan was laid out, we geared up for battle, and I quickly wiped my tears away and steeled myself. I had two little brothers to look out for and protect. For me, breaking down was not an option.

The four months that followed were undeniably the most difficult of my life. My dad had intense chemotherapy three days a week for twelve hours a day. He lost an alarming amount of weight, he was constantly nauseous, he lost his hair, he had awful sores on the inside of his mouth, he was pasty and frail, and his knuckles turned brown. Over the course of his treatment, his weakened immune system subjected him to two infections, one of which almost killed him. Twice during this time my dad called me to tell me how much he loved me, to take care of my brothers, and to say goodbye.

My dad before his diagnosis and in the middle of his treatment.

Twice (one the day of the echocardiogram and the other the worst day of one of the infections) I had to hear my dad say what were almost last words to me, and I was fourteen years old. Twice I was slapped with the realization that I might walk down the aisle alone on my wedding day. Twice I thought my future kids would never know their grandfather.

I know everyone says “It gets better,” but at that point, it wasn’t; it got worse. His spirit was broken. It seemed that he didn't want to fight anymore. I started to steel myself, I pushed all of my sadness and panic aside and zeroed in on supporting my brothers and my mom. I ran the house while she spent long nights with my dad in the hospital. I barely dragged myself out of bed for school each morning and my grades slipped drastically. I was struggling in some of my favorite subjects, and nearly failing in the others. My school was wonderfully supportive of me; teachers and students alike tried to help me as best they could by sending their love and prayers, but school was the last thing on my mind.

One of the biggest support groups we had, however, was none other than the New York City Police Department. These people drove us to the hospital to visit my dad, raised money for him, and had their wives send trays of food to our house when my mom was too busy to cook. Officers stood guard outside my dad’s hospital room, and once or twice the police commissioner came to shake my dad’s hand and wish him well. The NYPD is a blue extension of my family, and they will always have a place in my heart.

Miraculously, by August 2012, the tumor, which had shrunk to the size of a small basketball, was small enough to surgically remove. Dr. Lee’s deft hands performed the procedure, and then sent samples of the mass away to be researched, for this was something unique.

My dad was one of the first 9/11 first responders to be diagnosed with angiosarcoma, and thanks to what he went through, the team at Mt. Sinai and other medical centers will better understand how to treat it. I think this, along with the strength of God, is why he survived. God sent us into this battle because he knew we’d be able to win it for all the other families who would struggle in the future.

In 2013, we learned that the Sarcoma Foundation of America was bestowing the Courage Award upon my dad. It honors someone who has demonstrated strength and perseverance in their battle with sarcoma. We were invited to attend SFA’s 11th Annual Gala in New York City, where my dad went up on stage and accepted his award from Giants linebacker Mark Herzlich, who also battled sarcoma.


My dad holding his Courage Award sitting beside my little brother at the gala.


I was proud of my dad that night, but that wasn’t the highlight of it. First, we met two wonderful women, Corrie Painter and Lauren Ryan. Corrie was also a Courage Award recipient that year, and Lauren was still battling primary angiosarcoma of the breast; Corrie's was in remission. After our families met at the gala, we became very close friends with Corrie, Lauren, and the organization they founded, Angiosarcoma Awareness, and they were constantly asking for news about my dad and supporting us on our journey back to normalcy. Sadly, Lauren passed away in 2014, leaving behind her husband and her children. We miss her and are forever grateful for her.

Meeting Corrie and Lauren was wonderful, but I met someone else that night who I desperately needed to. His name is Dr. Robert Maki, and without him, my dad would not have survived. My mom and I stood with him at the side of the stage while my dad accepted his award, silent, watching him smile, clasp his hands together, and nod. My mom bent down to me at that moment, and whispered something I’ll never forget.

“Look at his face. Look at how proud he is. He lives for people like your father, the fight [against angiosarcoma] is his life.”

At that moment I walked up to Dr. Maki and threw my arms around him.

My dad is now five years cancer free; he defied the statistic. And while we won’t ever forget the battle we fought, we were keen to leave it behind. I’ve learned a lot, to say the least, about life from that time. I’ve learned to appreciate little things, to never take who you have for granted, and most of all, that my dad saved other lives.


I sincerely hope that, because of his journey, no daughter of an angiosarcoma patient will ever hear her father’s possible last words to her over the phone the day before her fifteenth birthday. I hope no wife will ever have to cry and say over and over again “Why my husband, why our children, why me?” I hope no son will ever have to think that maybe, just maybe, the fishing trip he’s taking with his father tomorrow is his last.

But hope is all I can do, and hope is the best thing I can do.

Cancer is not something that brings out a person’s most philosophical side, makes them speak words they can only understand in the twilight of life. Cancer does not target anyone in particular, cancer doesn’t care. Cancer yanks the rug out from under you and threatens to strike down everything and everyone you love. And I know what you’re thinking. “That could never happen to me.”

Well, that’s what I thought too.

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