Herbert Endle Herb's Cancer Journey

Welcome to Herb's CaringBridge website.  I am using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. I appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.  I was updating everyone by facebook private message,  but it got to the point where I could not remember who I had updated.  So, I decided to start a Caring Bridge site for him.   Herb was diagnosed with Stage IV Lung Cancer in March of 2016.  He started chemotherapy in April and has had six, three week long cycles, with one week off in each cycle.  Two of the cycles were interrupted when he developed severe pneumonia.  Last December, Herb became hoarse and developed some swallow problems.  It was determined that the cancer in the lymph nodes in his chest are compressing the nerve that serves the muscle for speaking and swallow function.  He is also more short of breath, so he started on 2 ml of 02 a couple of weeks ago.  He talks in a whisper right now and the chemotherapy has destroyed what little of his hearing function he still had.   Last week he had a consultation with a radiation specialist and it was determined that he would have two, five day cycles of radiation on the tumor that is closest to the bronchial tubes and involves those lymph nodes.  We hope this will shrink that biggest tumor and give him some help with breathing.  Herb recently celebrated his 66th birthday on Valentines Day.  All of his brothers and sisters were there and I think this was just the boost he needed to get the radiation started.  There were a lot of hugs and a lot of laughs with all of the people that love him and support him.  This will be the place for major updates in the future.  Thank you all for caring.