A Message from John Foote...

My wife are sitting in her oncologist's office at the Sunnybrook Odette Cancer Center in Toronto, one of the very hospitals in the world, with world reknowned doctors and surgeons. Sherri has had a rough week, which indluced being hospitalized after a bout of massive seizures, the reults of new cancer being found in her brain, and her body not absorbing the drug meant to keep her seizures under control. In 2008 I was awakened to her seizing (something she had never done before) and within two days we were told she had brain cancer, a tumour in the frontal libe that needing to come out. The surgeons went in and took half of it, any more would have done her harm, and she started a regime of radiation. which held the cancer at bay for  a time. She lost her beautiful red curls, but never her beauty nor her fighting spirit.
For two years we are good, no cancer appears on her MRI's and we figure we are good for a while, knowing that they could not get it all, knowing that was still a little less than half left in her brain.
March, 2011.

The latest MRI shows new growths within the scar tissue. Her doctor wants to examine the pictures and see what is happening. They give her an isotope test and then on a Thursday evening she goes into a massive seizure, for more then ten minutes. The ambulance arrives, and she seizes again, and three more times within the hour before they can load her up with medicine to stop the seizures. Hospitalized for four days she comes home, knowing we go to see her oncologist in three days.
So here we are.
Dr. James Perry comes into the office with a grim smile, and two other people. Trouble. He never comes in with assistance.
   "We're in trouble", he says, "Sherri is in trouble my friend."
   I can feel the ground tremble beneath me and reach for sherri's hand.
   He suggests an aggressive rpound of chemotherapy, for two months to see if the chemo can shrink the tumours. If they do, we will continue on with the drugs, if not they will consider going back into her brain though there is much greater risk of complication this time.
   The doctor once asked me what Sherri's best case scenario was and I stated, "to grow old with me". He asked again, "and if she cannot have that", he asked.
   I told him Sherri wants our youngest, Ariana to be 18 before anything terrible happens. Looking me in the eye he tells me straight, "we have some work to do then".
   MY wife is in terrible trouble gang.
   I am not the sort of guy that prays, but have found myself doing that a little more these days.
   I cannot imagine waking up in a world in which Sherri does not exist. And though I will see her forever in my girls, and know she is with me, life without her on earth just would be as much fujn. She makes me laugh, she gets me, and understands, and get this, my obsession with the movies. Somehow I found the perfect girl!! And she's the love of my life and tells me I am the love of hers! It sounds stupid but I felt like I had always known her when we met for the first time...which I am told makes us soul mates.
   Movies just have not mattered so much.
   HOwever that said, you might like this.
   Sherri and I adored The Lord of the Rings trilogy, actually becoming depressed when the third film was out because it meant there were no more (this before the talk of The Hobbit). So on the first day of chemotherapy she asked me if we could watch the entire series together, and that is exactly what we have been doing. Sharing in the love for something on screen that mean so much for us. and of course I make all the movie references when I am driving to the college to lecture. I think of Sherri as Ethan Edwards, bravely moving into a fight because she knows she should and because she knows she can; I think of Christopher Reeve hurtling through the air to catch Lois because he has the strength to do it; and I think of Terms of Endearment and the conclusion, and I weep silently.
   No one should have to go through this. It is overwhelming.
   Think of us, and say a prayer...it can't hurt. And yes, I will get back to watching and writing real soon.

Our thoughts and prayers are with John during this tough time!