I coach the 4-H rifle club down in Greene County. In the fall of 14, a couple days after our Fall match (we meet year round so the little uns can keep their skills sharp for deer season) I got a call from a parent. One of the shooters (about 14 at the time) had experienced some discomfort in his sling arm (right arm in this case) the day after the match. They go see a doctor, one doctor leads to another doctor, which leads to the shorty having cancer in the bone just below the shoulder. He starts undergoing treatment and they go in and cut out about 4" of bone and replace it with a pig bone. The next spring we let him shoot off of a bench and rest ( a cardinal sin for a kid that old in my club but come on...) and I bring in a bench rest shooter to work on that skill set with him exclusively. He looked like death warmed over all year. He was probably 130 pounds and shot in June at 83 pounds. His skin was pale and he looked like a sack a crap, a fact we frequently informed him of. The bone took and by August he was done with his infusions and gaining weight. He shot in our fall match with a sling on the pig arm and weighed 105.
This spring he came to the first officer meeting (he's the Treasurer, which means he quotes the Spaceballs desert scene at ever meeting) at 115 and his facial hair had started growing again. Things looked great and he was shooting well. At no point has his attitude dipped, including when he was running our biathlon obstacle course in the fall and split his eyebrow open and it bled forever because he is on blood thinners.
Week before last he came to a meeting looking pale again. Turns out at his last checkup they found 6 spots on his lungs. 4 were large enough to biopsy and they are cancerous. They took those 4 out last week and began infusions again this week. Old boy still participated in our land navigation class, which isn't for sissies. That said, he's starting to lose weight again and he is going to be struggling.
We could use some positive thoughts for the feller.
This spring he came to the first officer meeting (he's the Treasurer, which means he quotes the Spaceballs desert scene at ever meeting) at 115 and his facial hair had started growing again. Things looked great and he was shooting well. At no point has his attitude dipped, including when he was running our biathlon obstacle course in the fall and split his eyebrow open and it bled forever because he is on blood thinners.
Week before last he came to a meeting looking pale again. Turns out at his last checkup they found 6 spots on his lungs. 4 were large enough to biopsy and they are cancerous. They took those 4 out last week and began infusions again this week. Old boy still participated in our land navigation class, which isn't for sissies. That said, he's starting to lose weight again and he is going to be struggling.
We could use some positive thoughts for the feller.
