Ed Duerr: Well, I’m Ed Duerr and we are at my home in Rowling North Carolina. And these are my three daughters Celeste, Keven, and Erin and my grandson Humsa and my granddaughter Isen. There was a lot of temptation to give up. It was, it was not an easy journey, but knowing that they were there for me and with me literally made the journey a lot easier. And it gave me a reason and a motivation to continue doing it.
Erin: I think in general when, it makes you have to instantly come to face in terms with somebody in your family’s mortality. It, there’s no words to explain that really. It totally changes your perspective on everything.
Keven: We did have a family meeting a couple days after we returned from the initial visit to CTCA to discuss treatment options and what we thought as a group was the best course. When he was having a hard time with side effects we needed to coordinate it to make sure that someone, be it family or a close friend could visit him each day to kind of keep an eye on him make sure he was going ok.
Celeste: I was concerned about how the traveling was going to affect his treatment and if he was, if that was going to take too much away from him, but I mean it turned out obviously that that was the best place for him to be so.
Erin: At the same time, we know he’s in the best hands. So, he’s better off there and traveling back and fourth than here with somebody else.
Celeste: You know, instead of just throwing a lot of pills down his throat or something like that or just pumping him full of a lot of drugs that have weird side effects or anything like that, I think it’s better that he have the nutritional changes and the lifestyle changes and things like that. He’s continued a lot of the stuff that he’s started there and he’s continued to get stronger and stronger everyday you know, and like I said he’s running marathons now so.
Ed Duerr: When I was sitting in Dr. Rudolph’s office and he was reviewing my blood results and he turned and looked at me and he said, “I can find no trace of lymphoma in you anywhere”. I just kind of looked at him and smiled and he said, “I cant find it, it’s not there you are clinically cancer free”. And my only thought was, “Yeah, we did it”.
Keven: When we found out my dad was cancer free it felt like we bought back time.
Celeste: Little things that didn’t used to matter suddenly are very important.
Keven: We have a history of surprise parties in our family so for his cancer-free party we went with a surprise party.
Ed Duerr: There were cancer free posters on the walls and so on, it was, it was a very good party. It was a lot of fun we had a barbecue and so on it was good, and I know a couple days later I sent out an email thanking all of them for the party and all and Celeste replied to that email by saying something to the effect that, “That party was not for you, that party was us thanking you for surviving”. I have pretty much made it my mission in life for however long that is, twenty years, thirty years, to see to it that CTCA gets every patient that needs them, and that’s to me that’s every patient that has cancer.