1980s : Rex survived colon cancer through surgery and radiation. The doctors removed about a foot of his large bowel.

1990s : He was diagnosed with prostate cancer and had radiation treatments for it. As far as we know it's in remission.

June 18, 2003 : Rex had not been able to keep food down for about two weeks now and as a result, lost 10 lbs. The previous year or so he'd had similar problems with eating but not as severe. Today he had an endoscopy which showed a blockage in his esophagus. A biopsy was taken.

June 21, 2003 : Today he had a CT scan.

June 24, 2003 : Today Rex and Edi saw a doctor who told them that his cancer was aggressive. Rex asked how long he had to live: 3 - 6 months the doctor told him.

July 1, 2003 : Notes from Rex's visit with his oncologist earlier today...

(From doctor's written notes:):
He will be getting 3 chemo drugs: cisphatin, etoposide (vepesid) and adriamycin. The oncologist wrote these out so deciphering them was tricky. The first one I could not find any info about searching online, the other two sound awful.

(Transcripted from mom's tape-recording):
"Very likely spread to the upper part of stomach. Couldn't see that very well so it's difficult to interpret. It's reasonable to think there's cancer down in the stomach also. The worst thing though is that is shows a lot of lymph gland involvement up in the central part of the chest. So that that means it's not amenable to surgery. The chance of living to 5 years is less than 10% and that's with or without treatment. If you want to try to fight this we can do chemotherapy treatments, and we might get the thing to shrink down but typically it doesn't stay shrunk for more than perhaps six or eight months. If it shrinks down very well we may see if you can get some radiation in that area. It's possible that we may then consider surgery but it's not a primary treatment. It's something that we might think about later if everything else goes well. The disadvantage of all this treatment is that the treatment is quite difficult mainly if you feel sick and if the treatment doesn't work at all it will actually take away from the time you have remaining.

"This is an adenocarcinoma which is at least a stage 3 and possibly a stage 4 because there are some abnormalities on the liver that showed in the CAT scan. But, then again, CAT scans are very difficult to interpret and what showed might be cysts. Nevertheless it's questionable about the liver.

"Diet should be soft and liquid foods. You have the option of having a stent put inside the esophagus to keep it open but it would have to be a very big stent which might interfere with breathing because it's not flexible and will not contract when you swallow. "

July & August, 2003 : Rex rides daily on a shuttle bus to a Kaiser facility in the Los Angeles area for his treatments.

Christmas 2003 : Doing well. Gaining weight and feeling better.

March 6, 2004 : Rex's 81st birthday.

April 1, 2004 : Rex has been eating alot so far this year but is is slowly losing weight.

December 10, 2004 : He and his son James went golfing together today. Dad stated that he'd done pretty much everything he ever wanted to do in his lifetime and was ready to "go".

March 3, 2005 : Started Hospice. They were extremely helpful and made sure that dad got whatever he needed to feel comfortable. Dad was pleased that he would not need to pay for it. Even at this late stage of life, dad worried about money.

March 6, 2005 : Dad's 82nd birthday. He died at a quarter past nine this morning.