Monday morning, April 3, 1978, we returned to Houston and met with my doctor. He advised us that he and several other doctors had reviewed the results of my tests and discussed my case at great length.

His exact words were: “Dick, you are a very sick boy. We are going to make you a lot sicker, but we are going to cure you. We are going to cure you so that you can work for cancer.”

Melodramatic? I guess so. But hope is the one ingredient that every human clings to. It gives us a reason to live, to fight. If I could struggle to the end of this grim path, survive the radiation and chemotherapy, I told myself, I would devote my life to helping others stricken as I was.

We were truly elated; these were the first positive words and first ray of hope we had been given. As much as we wanted to, it was difficult to fully believe, comprehend and accept.

The doctor explained that the treatments I would be receiving had never been done before in this exact sequence. I would be given two weeks of radiation therapy, immediately followed by one week of chemotherapy. I would be allowed to recuperate and regain my strength. Surgery would then remove the diseased area, and immunization therapy would follow immediately. After recuperating from this, I would receive one year of chemotherapy.

The logic behind this was explained to me. Cancer cells are extremely small. One million cancer cells are the size of the head of a pin. One billion cancer cells are the size of a small marble one centimeter in diameter. Cancer cells can be killed more easily than healthy cells. The radiation therapy that I would receive would kill precisely 72 percent of my cancer cells each day. Therefore, if I started off with 100 billion cancer cells, after the first day I would only have 28 billion left. After the tenth day, I would only have 296,000 left.

Chemotherapy, on the other hand, can do very little against a large, massive cancer, but is excellent at killing isolated, individual cancer cells. Therefore, after the two weeks of radiation, the week of chemotherapy should be extremely effective against the relatively few cancer cells left. Also, a big problem in cancer is that since the cells are so small, they tend to break off from the main tumor and lodge themselves in other parts of the body. The brain and the liver both tend to strain blood, which is why cancers so often metastasize, or spread, there. The chemotherapy before surgery was to prevent the cancer from metastasizing somewhere else while I was recuperating from radiation and lung surgery.

As for the immunization therapy, it is predicated on the belief that everyone has an immune system that constantly kills cancer cells. Through some sort of weakness, this immune system may let down and allow the cancer cells to grow. Obviously, since I did have cancer, I had a flaw in my immune system.

Research has found that people who have had tuberculosis rarely get lung cancer. On this premise, I was to be given tuberculosis after surgery to stimulate my immune system and keep me from getting lung cancer again after recovery.

The year of chemotherapy was to take away any chance of recurrence. While the odds were great that I would be completely free of cancer, the likelihood that a recurrence would be fatal made any odds too risky.