Fallen Warrior ~ Jim in Delaware

staceya said:

Thank You Jim
For everything.
Truly heartbroken.

RushFan said:

Dang it...
So sorry to read this one...rest in peace Jim.

Kimba1505 said:

Too hard.
It was hard to hear after 5 years Jim had lung cancer. He was a huge inspiration to me during Mark's treatment. So very very hard to hear this news now. I will always remember him as I sit on the Delaware beaches. Sad. Very sad.

wifeforlife said:

****
Maybe it is when you join a board like this that makes you attached to certain posters... or maybe it is just the conection of this ****in disease.... Damnit anyway. rest in peace Jim.

Roselvr said:

Reading the posts here & Cancer Compass; I'm pretty sure that he could not come back & post because he wanted us to remember him the way he was & not the Jim with "cancer eating his body"

Here are a few posts for anyone wanting to read them. I'm not sure how to find his posts here.

I'm back ... and so is my cancer by Delnative on Mon Mar 07, 2011 01:54 PM

Some of you (well, one or two, maybe) may have wondered where I've been recently. In mid-February I went for what was supposed to be my final PET scan, two years and four months after treatment ended. My docs thought it would be clean. It wasn't.

Now I have a tumor in my lung; it's spread to two lymph nodes in my chest. There is a big blessing in the middle of this bad news, though. My docs at Johns Hopkins logically assumed that my tonsil cancer had metastasized and spread to the lung, which happens in about 10 percent of the cases. But the Hopkins cancer board concluded that the two were unrelated. That makes for a much better prognosis.

And one truly weird thing: My tonsil cancer was positive for HPV-16, and the lung tumor is HPV-18. (One can't morph into the other, which was one fact that led to the tumor board's conclusion.) The docs told me that HPV-positive lung tumors are rare to begin with, and when they are seen they're almost exclusively found in black patients. I'm as white as white can be. Go figure.

I shared this at CC; want to post it here too- Lung cancer is not related to H&N Mar 31, 2011 05:39 AM

the tumor board at Johns Hopkins concluded this cancer did NOT arise from the tonsil cancer, even though both are HPV-related. (Tonsil was HPV-16, lung is HPV-18.) This gives me a much better prognosis than if it had metastasized from the tonsil cancer

I've survived another round by Delnative on Thu May 19, 2011 06:14 PM


This is the post where he talks about retiring.
Back again, for the moment by Delnative on Sat Jul 23, 2011 10:10 AM by Delnative on Sat Jul 23, 2011 10:10 AM

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted here, due to a combination of heavy workload (now over) and major health problems (only beginning). Being a journalist, albeit one who retired July 1, I’ll keep this brief.

I wrapped up a 34-year career as a reporter and editor on the final day of Delaware’s legislative session, where the House, which I’d covered off and on since the late 1970s, awarded me a tribute and members of the leadership said glowing things about me. It probably was the highlight of my career.

Then, just the other day, I got a call from none other than VPOTUS himself -- Joe Biden -- wishing me well in retirement and in my battle with cancer. He even gave me his private phone number. I know that sounds like a big deal to people with little knowledge of Delaware, but around here, Joe is just Joe. I’ve known him for years.

This leads me to my health problem. I wrapped up rads and chemo for my tonsil cancer in October 2008 and followed it up with a modified radical neck dissection in January 2009. All appeared to be going well -- until February, when a PET scan showed cancer in my lungs. Once again I returned to Johns Hopkins for seven weeks of rads and two cycles of cisplatin. While another PET showed that the tumor and nodes in my chest are shrinking, I now have multiple small spots in my lungs and a single one on my liver. To top it off, literally, I have lesions in the brain.

On Monday I will return to Hopkins for 10 sessions of full-brain rads, which will be followed up with chemo. They’re not sure whether my original tonsil cancer metastasized and spread, or if the lung cancer was an unrelated tumor that then metastasized. Either way, I’m facing an uphill battle.