Bill & Sandy Fifield Artist - Authors - Speakers

“Good News”

After nearly 3 months of constant care, I got to watch as Bill jumped into our SUV and drove off to a men’s retreat in Estes Park for the whole weekend.   I was invited to come along to act as nurse but his eyes and stamina have been steadily getting better and better during this last month and he wanted to do it all by himself.  I felt such bittersweet relief that we had made it to this point.

Last week we went for a follow up MRI to see if the fourteen days of whole brain radiation treatments were successful in stopping the growth of the tumor that was left in his brain after surgery.  We sat in the surgeon’s office anxiously awaiting the results.  As the good Dr.Vollmer looked at the images on the computer monitor, he did a double take as he looked at the screen,  then brought up the original MRI to check what he was seeing.  Sure enough the small (pea-sized) tumor was gone—no visible trace left—and the shadows of the larger (egg-sized) tumor that had been removed were virtually non-existent.  With restrained optimism he expressed his pleasure with the results and said that we will do a follow-up MRI in three months.

Now, two more cycles of chemo and the lung lesion (unwanted guest) will be in the cosmic dump as well.   The prayers and love from all our friends are doing the job.  The chemo makes Bill’s mouth taste like he’s been sucking on a penny.  His appetite is one-half of what it was and that one-half is tinged with nausea, so we’ve been on a nostalgia recipe kick.  How about some meatloaf with mashed potatoes, pork steak with corn, tuna casserole with potato chips, and root beer floats?  Good grief—it’s like being transported back to our childhoods in the fifties!

Read More

A Gift Wrapped in Barbed Wire

It started out as a weird god’s-eye shaped floater in the left of my field of vision and turned into a brain tumor and lung cancer in a mere three days.  I had gone to my doctor, who referred me to an eye specialist to find out where this irritating thing came from.   Next he’s shining a very bright light into my right eye “Lookup, look down, look side to side” he asks. Then he says, “My, my, the viscous has pulled away from the orb, collapsing with the mesh that holds it.  What you are seeing is the mesh becoming visible as it contracts—in other words, a floater” I ask, “What can we do about that? It’s right in the middle of where I look, kind of an inconvenience for an artist.” The good doc replies, “Well you are lucky it didn’t pull the cornea off with it or you would be blind. It could go away in three days or it could take three months to float to the bottom of your eye.”    Good grief, he sounded like the phone repair guy: “Stay by your phone and we will be there sometime this year!”

Read More

©2024 fifield's THE STUDIO - Website Design by eLumina Communications