By Craig Smith
Bob Fescemyer wears two rubber bracelets on his left wrist, the telltale signs of his family’s battles with cancer.
One is for his son, Michael, who is dying of prostate cancer. The other is for himself, a survivor of the same disease. Bob Fescemyer was diagnosed in April and had his prostate removed in August.
“Sometimes I’m so angry at this disease if I could get my hands on it, I would strangle it,” said Fescemyer, 66, a retired 37-year veteran of the Oakmont Police Department, who was elected mayor of the borough in 2005.
But the family’s battle with cancer goes beyond father and son.
His father, John, had prostate cancer. His mother, Helen, died of lung cancer. His brother, John, died at 43 of a massive brain tumor – – and Fescemyer’s wife, Judy, 66, was diagnosed in 1998 with multiple myeloma, cancer of plasma cells, the white blood cells present in bone marrow.
“Every single person on my dad’s side had cancer,” said Judy Fescemyer, whose mother, Florence Christman, died of breast cancer, and father, Bill Christman, suffered multiple ailments, including cancer when he died. Her sister, Karen Hubler, 58, is dying of cancer in California.
The family’s cancer rate is unusually high, said Dr. David Whitcomb, chief of the division of gastroenterology, hepatology and nutrition at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Researchers have begun to focus on the role genetics plays in the growth of cancer among families.
“This is an issue that’s being hotly debated right now … Cancer genetics is an area of greater and greater recognition,” he said.
“It sometimes takes a combination of two or three things randomly inherited to put an organ at risk,” Whitcomb said.
Bob and Judy Fescemyer were high school sweethearts who married 48 years ago. His wife’s diagnosis hit him hard. He had to work that day, so she heard the news from her doctor herself. She wasn’t prepared for what she heard, and gave the news to her husband at home.
“I’m thinking I’m going to lose my wife,” Bob Fescemyer said. “I wished I would have been there.”
Doctors gave Judy Fescemyer five years to live. “She’s going into her 10th,” her husband said with a smile.
Their battle can be almost overwhelming at times, he said.
Judy Fescemyer was hospitalized for 31 days in 1999 while she underwent chemotherapy, radiation treatments, blood transfusions and stem cell replacement. Her husband slept at the hospital during her stay and kept a journal of “what I took, when I took it.”
They went to visit Michael at his home in Hopewell, Va., last month. Fescemyer took his son fishing and they spent a lot of time talking.
“It got pretty intense,” he said. “My son is dying. It shouldn’t be this way. I should be going before my kids.”
Michael Fescemyer, 44, is a 20-year Army veteran who served in Panama, Haiti and Iraq. He first complained of pain during his 13- month tour of Iraq and was told it was probably bad food or dysentery, his father said. He was diagnosed in late 2007.
Prostate cancer is the most common nonskin cancer in America, affecting one in six men, according to the Mayo Clinic, a renowned medical clinic in Rochester, Minn. Prostate cancer represents 25 percent of the almost 750,000 cancer cases reported in men this year, the American Cancer Society said.
Laughter helps them get through the tough days, Judy Fescemyer said. Even though she has outlived her doctor’s prediction, they don’t make long-term plans.
“We haven’t turned that corner yet,” she said.
Bob Fescemyer serves on the committee for the Riverview Relay for Life, which has raised $685,000 over the past eight years for cancer research.
“Every year I wore a T-shirt that said ‘committee.’ This year, mine said ‘survivor,’ ” he said.
He urges men to get a prostate cancer checkup and be tested for the disease early and often.
“Everything hinges upon finding this disease early and treating it early,” he said.
(c) 2008 Tribune-Review/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.
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