James Hayden James' Fight for Life

During the month of May in 2016,  James began to have lower  back pain.  So, like many of us he started going to a Chiropractor regularly with the hope that he could get the slightest amount of relief; at times his job was very physical.  It made sense to him that he was having back pain because he had probably lifted incorrectly, or possibly just strained or overworked his lower back.  Finally, on May 30th his back pain had become unbearable, as it had now started to radiate into his hips as well.  He could barely walk.  He came to me and told me that he needed to go to the ER.

You see, I knew that something wasn't right.  In the 25 years that James and I have been married, I can only think of one other time that James complained of pain continuously for more than a few days, and then have the pain become so severe that he had to go to the ER.  He spent a full seven days in the hospital that time.

Many tests were performed in the ER that day and after seven hours we were anxious for the results, but we were completely unprepared for the effect those results would have on the rest of our lives.


The ER doctor told us that the MRI showed lesions on the bones in the areas that James was complaining about.  The questions began to spill out.  We had no idea what this meant, and in hindsight we both realize that the doctor was trying very hard not to say the "C" word.  With every question we had that related to whether or not the doctor was saying that James has cancer, he would say "this could mean any number of things", but in what seemed like the same breath,   he told us that James needed to be seen in the Oncology department right away. He did not want James to return to work until he was cleared to do so by an Oncology doctor.  Now, I'm no genius, but I do know that Oncologists treat cancer patients.  This was frightenening.  What was more frightening was the Oncology department not having an available appointment until the following  week.


In the mean time, during a routine cardiology appointment--the Cardioligist began to go over lab results, he told us that James' PSI was 2,089 and that "this is not good".  He seemed very alarmed saying again "this is very bad".  Needless to say, we left that appointment pretty numb.











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