A fellow traveler

During my previous life as an advertising salesman I would regularly stop at Koehn Marketing, located at Watertown, South Dakota, and chew the fat with owner Jeff Koehn.

I would generally kick things off by asking, “How’s it going, Jeff?” and he would generally reply “Good, good! How about yourself?”

Last winter when I stopped at Koehn Marketing and posed my usual opening question, Jeff threw me for a loop by answering, “Not so good. I just found out that I have tonsil cancer.”

I told Jeff that I was sorry to hear this news and that I had never even heard of tonsil cancer. In a bizarre twist, I would later learn that at that very moment I also had cancer percolating in one of my tonsils.

After receiving my recent diagnosis, I chatted with Jeff to catch up on things. I also hoped that he could lend me some insight and advice regarding what’s in store for me. Plus, I felt the need to speak with someone who is a fellow traveler on this rocky road.

During the past six months, Jeff has endured a harrowing gauntlet of cancer treatments, from surgery to chemotherapy to radiation. He received the best possible news recently when his latest checkup revealed no signs of cancer. Even so, he will be closely monitored for the next several years.

Jeff is a big man both physically and personality-wise. He has a booming voice and an easy smile.

“It was a tough day when I learned of my diagnosis,” Jeff said. “My 15-year-old daughter cried when we told her about it, but I reassured her that the good news is that this type of cancer is highly curable. I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”

After surgery to remove his cancerous tonsil and lymph nodes, Jeff was given a month to heal. He then started on a regimen that included chemotherapy followed by radiation treatments.

“They told me that they had found clear margins when they took out the lymph nodes but would use radiation to wash the area and clean out any cancer cells that might have escaped,” Jeff said. “I was given the choice to be enrolled in a radiation de-escalation trial that’s being conducted by Mayo Clinic. I was all for having fewer radiation treatments over a shorter period of time. And I was happy to serve as a data point in the clinical trial.”

Jeff would be given a small dose of a chemotherapy drug once a week. This was followed by twice-a-day radiation sessions for five days. This continued until he received a total of 20 radiation treatments.

“I learned a lot during my treatment,” Jeff said, “For instance, radiation is the gift that keeps on giving. I felt OK after the first week, but soon began to feel progressively worse.”

It wasn’t long before Jeff began to lose his hair.

“At first it was just a bald spot that formed on the back of my head where the beam of radiation exited,” he said. “And my beard also disappeared in one patch. I eventually said the heck with it and shaved it all off. It was just easier that way.”

I recalled how Jeff had rocked his bald look. He sort of looked like Vin Diesel in a baseball cap.

“The effects of radiation continue to build even after you are done with the treatments,” Jeff said. “It was about a month after my last dose before I began to feel like I was beginning a gradual return to normal.”

I asked Jeff if he had any advice for a newbie who is about to start down the path he had so recently navigated.

“Do everything that they tell you to do,” he said. “That is especially true when it comes to physical therapy. Be militant about the exercises that they assign to you. Bear in mind that the more you start with, the more you finish with. And the most important thing of all is to keep a positive attitude.”

Jeff reports that he now feels great. His hair and beard have grown back, and his sense of taste has returned. His only complaint is that he still has a dry mouth.

“But I’ll take that tradeoff any day if it means more time with my family and my friends,” he said.

Jeff is already making good on this attitude.

“My family and I just got back from a long-planned trip to Europe,” he beamed. “We had the time of our lives, and I enjoyed every minute of it!”

Jerry’s book, Dear County Agent Guy, is available at http://Workman.com and in bookstores nationwide.