By Phil Sheridan
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Copyright 2007 Philadelphia Inquirer
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News
The firefighter went back to work last week. All it took to get there was everything he had.
He will be retiring in less than two months, anyway. That date — chosen in accordance with the Philadelphia Fire Department’s DROP program — was etched in stone a long time ago. It’s a date the firefighter was dreading, but at least he could prepare himself for the end of his 39-year career.
The cancer didn’t care about any of that.
It showed up on his tongue. The doctors found it late last summer, and the firefighter had surgery. Part of his tongue was removed, replaced by tissue from his wrist. Next came the real hell: six weeks of chemo and radiation that left him thinner, weaker and with a feeding tube inserted into his stomach.
When the doctors say six weeks, they don’t warn you about the hard months that follow. The firefighter knew it would be tough but expected that he would be able to get back to the firehouse for his last six months or so.
After all, he had always been a gamer. Broken ribs? He worked through them. Broken collarbone? He missed the minimum mandated time and came back in spite of the pain. Missing work was not something the firefighter took lightly. He had too much respect for the job and for the guys who count on each other to be there day in and night out.
But this cancer was different. The tumor itself wasn’t much, barely enough to get your attention. It was the treatment that turned a fit, athletic 66-year-old man — a snowboarder, a scuba diver, a motorcyclist, a hunter — into a patient too weak to get out of his chair some days.
He lost weight. He lost the muscle tone he’d maintained all his adult life with a daily workout regimen. And then there was the fact he couldn’t eat. The radiation left him without saliva, so even soup went down like so much flavorless cardboard.
Hence the feeding tube, which suddenly became the next-to-last obstacle between the firefighter and his wish to return to work.
It was like this: The city doctors wouldn’t clear him to work while it was in, and his surgeon wouldn’t take it out until he was able to get enough nutrition without it for two months. With his DROP date locked in, the firefighter was suddenly facing the prospect that he’d never work again.
This happens to athletes all the time. They have an idea how long their careers will be. A sudden injury can change that, can rob them of the time they believed they had. It’s difficult enough for a man or woman to hit retirement age and deal with the sudden inactivity without being cheated of that final year.
The department made it clear he could work down at headquarters on administrative duty. But after 39 years of putting himself on the line, of working with and supervising the best people he knew, the firefighter wanted to end it the right way. He wanted to wear the uniform he wore with pride all those years, not a clean and pressed lieutenant’s dress uniform down at HQ.
This had something to do with honor.
He convinced his doctor to remove the feeding tube. That left the final hurdle. Literally, the firefighter had to fight City Hall. He had to get the cancer doctors to communicate with the fire department’s doctors and persuade them all to clear him for active duty.
The firefighter’s son listened to accounts of his father’s quest with mixed feelings. He knew his dad really wanted this and worried about what disappointment would do to a spirit already brought low by the cancer. The firefighter’s wife and son talked about putting aside their own fears — fears the families of every firefighter, police officer and soldier somehow live with — and supporting this crazy quest.
Why not just let it go? Why not be grateful to make it through a long career in one piece? Why not just relax and enjoy the rest of the life you won in a brutal fight with cancer?
The only answer came in the firefighter’s stubborn determination. This is a man who dropped his Eagles season tickets because he didn’t like the way Norman Braman ran the team — and who never looked back. He sticks to his guns, and that’s how he came to be back at the firehouse last week.
He has less time left before his retirement date than it took him to deal with the red tape and bureaucracy, but he made it. That’s what counts. The firefighter is once again what he wanted to be. A firefighter. And there isn’t much left for the son to say about it.
Except: I love you, Dad. Be careful, please. And happy Father’s Day.