News from Houston….

Hello Everyone,

Well here’s what I got so far. Right now I’m in Starbucks @ Rice Village in Houston. Our flight leaves back to Midland around 8:45PM tonight. If any of you ladies are ever up this way you need to come over here. It’s a really nice area for shopping and plenty of places for the guys to sit around and wait and drink adult beverages.   Yesterday completely sucked. They confirmed our worst fears. I have Stage 4 Melanoma that has spread to my brain. Those of you who know I had a melanoma that I was treated for in 2000. Unlucky for me it came back. We saw the doctor (Agop Bedikian) about 1:00 yesterday afternoon and he informed us that there are about 10 tumors on my brain but two were rather large. He was not sure whether or not the brain surgeon would be willing to operate. The way we left his office was very disturbing. He went ahead and set up an appointment with the Neurosurgeon for today just to see if he was willing to operate. Last night was probably the longest night of my life. Kim and I sat up till about 1:00AM looking on the computer for alternative cures and such. Unfortunately we did not find anything of consequence. I finally made Kim and my mother take a sleeping pill so they could get some sleep. I wondered around the  hotel for a little while and finally went to sleep. I got a few hours sleep which was better than I thought I would.   I would like to apologize to the people that tried to call me yesterday and last night. I just could not talk to anyone. It took everything I had to talk to Sydney. I will get with everyone this weekend or Monday to say hello and talk for a while.    Today started off allot like yesterday ended. We were still in a state of shock. We had an appointment with the neurosurgeon (Ganesh Rao) at 10:00AM. Of course they were running about 2 hours behind so we just sat there for what seemed like a week. We finally got in a room about 12:30PM. When the doctor came in he was cautious but positive. The first thing he mentioned were the options we had. That was completely different from the doctor yesterday. Without going into to much detail, we had 4 options. The first is let nature take it’s course and make me comfortable. The doctor was not happy with that option and of course neither was I.  Another option was to have the two big tumors removed on the top of my brain here in Houston and try total brain radiation. This is the road we are going to take.

The surgery is scheduled for Thursday of next week. I have to be in Houston Wednesday at 8:30AM for some preliminary MRI’s and other tests. So we will probably leave around 4:00PM Tuesday. If everything goes as it should then I should be out of the hospital in 5-6 days. I will then head back to Midland probably the middle of the next week. They are going to let me do the radiation in Midland. I will have to go back to Houston quite a bit but it’s 10 times better than having to stay in Houston for a really long time.

I will try to get with everyone this weekend and/or Monday to say hello and thank you for everything that you have already done. You never really know how many people you care about and how many people care about you until something like this happens. I am truly blessed with the family and friends that I have. I’m also blessed to have my family at Wood Group ESP. They have been GREAT through this whole ordeal. I really appreciate all the help all of you have given me with work and overall support.

Thanks again to everyone for everything you’ve already done and what you continue to do. I will talk to you soon.

I’m sure I forgot someone on this email so please send it out to them as well.

Thanks and Love to you all,

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