"Fight For Air Climb" The team I climbed for and the reason!

Everyone should be thankful for their health and realize someone out there needs our support.

I have been meaning to do this for a while and it is just hard to write somtimes, but here you go. Tried to keep it somewhat short, but afraid that I am a little long winded. :-) Michael Herrington was wrongly diagnosed by a @$$%^&* doctor in Bartlesville Oklahoma. He was running one day and had a terrible pain in his left leg. He went to the ER and the dr told him to go see the Orthopedic Surgeon. ER dr said what he had was a benign mass in his tibia that was super tiny and could be taken out pretty easily. The @$$&*^ Orthopedic Surgeon told him the ER doctor was an idiot and that he had a pulled muscle and needed to go back to school. He was going to NSU in Tahlequah and planning on transferring to OSU. He was studying to be a wildlife/forestry ranger. He went back to school and about 3 months later woke up in excruciating pain in his leg and called my mom to make another appt for him. When he got to the @$$^&*^ Doctor, he thankfully wasn't in and his PA looked at his x-ray and said "this isn't a pulled muscle" and immediatly scheduled an appointment with the only Orthopedic Oncologist in oklahoma Dr. Kimberly Smith. She was Waymon Tisdales dr. So we go there and she tells us what he has is called Giant Cell Tumor and it is a benign mass that takes over the bones and has to be removed. Said that if they had caught it the first time that it would just be a tiny scraping off and putting some cement in the hole and done, but because we had waited (because dr told him it was pulled muscle) she had to remove the entire upper part of his tibia, screw his tendons and ligaments to the other bone and it was a pretty big surgery. A couple of months later he felt another bump. We went back and this time there was one on his nerve. She said he was probably going to be a repeater...which was rare but happened. Later that month Mike was helping some friends move when he picked up a dresser and had chest pain and began coughing up massive amounts of blood. We thought he cracked a rib and punctured his lung. Went to the hospital and they had NO IDEA what it was. There was just a ton of "things" in his lungs. They thought it was a fungus or and infection. After quite a bit of research they discovered it was cancer. The Giant Cell Tumor is benign, however in 1% of the population it will metastasize to the lungs.( something Dr. Smith should have caught) Bartlesville wouldn't touch him. Sent him immediately to MD Anderson in Houston. What he had was so rare they were planning on studying his case. He originally qualified for a trial study in CA but his was growing so fast they had to do something immediately (strange because it is supposed to be slow growing) We were told worse case scenario he had 2 years. He was 21. He was put on 3 of the most aggressive chemotherapy's available. One was a drip directly into his heart that could cause a heart attack so he had to stay in Houston for 3-5 days at a time to be monitored. Thankfully Conoco Phillips has a private plane that flies from Bartlesville to Houston and they have Angel Flight that takes MD Anderson patients back and forth for free. Long story shortened... the tumors in his lungs looked like if you dipped a paintbrush in paint and pulled the bristles back and flicked it on a canvas....the doctor said there were thousands! So 6 months go by and there is a lot I'm not going to go into. The sores in his mouth, he couldn't eat, his breathing became difficult and his main fear was that he was going to suffocate and that was the way he was going to die. January 11, 2010 I get a call at 5am from my mother that Mike had gotten a blood clot and they had to intabate (sp?) him and he was in intensive care and I needed to get there. I had just spoken to him the night before and he was doing great and laughing and making jokes. Just fine, things looked good. We were in Bartlesville and we were waiting in the Intensive care waiting room for hours. We were originally told that he was fine and would be able to see him shortly. After close to 5 hours of no word, and lots of waiting, his doctor came in and told us that Mike's tumors had taken over and that he was not going to survive the cancer. I asked him if he was talking about Months or weeks and he said "I'm talking about now". We were finally allowed to see him but what we were not told is that while we were waiting, Mike had suffered a heart attack. They had resuscitated him. He was sedated and only kept alive by the tubes that were breathing for him. It was a scene were were unprepared for when we walked in the room. My brother had gotten married right after his diagnosis. So with his wife of 6 months at one side, my mother at his other and my sister and I at his feet, we waited for some other family members to arrive and we said our goodbye's. Then as the nurse who had been with him all these months and refused to leave his side even though her shift was over turned off the machine that was breathing for him, we watched as his heart slowly stopped beating. And as the monitor stopped, my brother took his final breath. The most amazing thing about it was that his lungs were so saturated with tumors that he could only take short shallow breaths, but the final breath...was a full, complete breath. He had just celebrated his 22nd birthday in November. My brother was the first boy in 3 generations of all girls. He was the laughter and the mischief. He was the godfather to my son. I am 14-years older than him and he lovingly called me Mom #2 cause I was constantly on him. He wanted me with him at every dr visit. I miss him terribly and yet am so thankful that he is not suffering anymore. Most of all I miss what was meant to be. The future nieces or nephews to spoil, his college graduation, and just the joking and the laughing that I could only do with him. Even in the hospital he was making jokes and cheering up the other patients as they sat and got their chemo treatments. He constantly threw out one-liners from funny shows or movies. That's why I chose "All Jacked Up on Mountain Dew" as he would quote Talledega nights often. My mother saw the ad for the air climb after we lost him and she told me I needed to do it. This year it falls on my mother's birthday so I saw it as a sign. :-) Thank you for running for him. Debby Page Our team took 2nd PLACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!