For about the first month after the diagnosis I cried for several hours every morning before Gator woke up. I called it my daily meltdown. I would call friends and family and they would talk me through it and usually this helped. I think Gator caught on because he decided to have me wake him up at 9am every morning instead of noon. Now I don’t have as much time to sit around by myself and dwell on things.

The official diagnoses of Non Small Cell Lung Cancer (metasized to lymph nodes and liver) wasn’t made until 2 weeks after Gators birthday, after 3 bronchoscope’s and a Mediastynscopy to get a biopsy. These tests caused Gators left vocal chord to stop working. Not being able to talk and Sing is the worst part of all this for Gator. He says he thinks he could handle everything else if he could just sing again….