Cancer warriors: Look ahead, live now
<p>Chuck Triphahn, manager of technical services for Plummer Forest Products, describes different areas of his company’s plant during a recent tour. Triphahn suffered from a tumor the size of an egg on his brain caused from glioblastoma multiforme. It was removed through surgery and recent screenings have tested negative so far. </p>
<p>Chuck Triphahn descends a short flight of stairs at Plummer Forest Products during a recent shift. His bout with cancer forced the 69-year-old to cut back to part-time work. Triphahn graciously credits his employer with flexibility, allowing him to continue his work despite time off for medical reasons and having to reduce his work load. </p>
<p>Colin Allen, 38, relaxes in a chair as his 10-year-old daughter Kailea plays with the family pet. Allen was diagnosed with a rare form of adenoid cystic carcinoma, forcing him to quit his job as a mechanic. </p>
<p>The Allen family enjoys a dinner recently at their Hayden home. Colin says family support has been a major influence in his battle with cancer. Clockwise from left, Devan, 14, Colin, Michael, 12, Kailea, 10, Chase, 16 and wife Amy. </p>
Editor's note: This is the third story in a four-part series which examines the struggles, hopes and daily battles of several individuals in our community who are living with cancer and fighting back.
For a guy who recently had a head full of staples and an egg-sized tumor in his brain, Chuck Triphahn is doing all right.
Triphahn, 69, of Post Falls, likes to laugh. He smiles when he talks. He beams like the proudest grandpa should when he shows off the photos of his daughters and grandkids, which are on just about every open surface in his living room. He jokes that he remembers "when dirt was new."
It might be hard for people to believe that just three years ago, he was diagnosed with brain cancer, a glioblastoma multiforme tumor that didn't leave much room for thinking about the future.
"When I went to see the first oncologist, she said, pretty much, 'You're a dead man walking,'" Triphahn said. "She said, 'You might knock it down, but it will come back with a vengeance and it will kill you.'"
He was diagnosed Sept. 11, 2011, after he noticed he was bumping into things.
"I felt just fine, and one day I went to walk into one of the offices at work and I walked into the left doorjamb," he said. "I've never in my life walked into a doorjamb, and I'm going like, 'This is kind of weird.' Later that day, I walked into two posts on the left side, and I'm going, 'This is really weird.'"
His regular doctor sent him to an eye doctor, who told him his eyes were fine. The eye doctor recommended an MRI, and the next day at work, he got the phone call.
"He said, 'I want you to go to the hospital tomorrow, we're going to operate on you,'" Triphahn said. "I'm like, 'OK.' And so they sent me to the hospital the next day."
Thus began 35 radiation treatments, three doses of chemotherapy and a whole whirlwind of emotions for Triphahn. He couldn't tell his daughters face-to-face, so he texted them the terrible news.
"I'm kind of going, 'You know, that's Triphahn luck,'" he said. "I've had a great life, great wife, great family, I have no gripes. Nobody lives forever."
Throughout his treatments and brain surgery, Triphahn had good days and bad.
"There were days when I'd get in what I'd call a 'blue funk,'" he said.
He's no stranger to the tragedy of cancer. He lost his wife of 38 years, Pat, to pancreatic cancer in 2004. When he became a patient, he wasn't really making plans.
"I was going to put in a garden and I thought, 'You know, I'm not going to put in a garden because I'll never get to eat anything,'" he said.
Chuck began to draw inspiration from those around him, from his elderly and energetic neighbor to others who suffered from cancer.
When he went to radiation one time, he was stuffed in a small waiting room with about eight other people. It was an unusually busy day.
"We all had different cancers, and we didn't know each other, but we started talking about what we had and the things that happen to us, like how the steroids make you hungry," he said. "3 o'clock in the morning, you're looking for anything you can find to eat, it's weird. So we started discussing this and one guy said, 'My wife, she's up at 3 o'clock in the morning looking for food,' and I said 'I know all about that ... that was really interesting for me. I don't mind sharing with those people."
Eventually, Chuck met Jim Morrison, a cancer survivor who has nothing but love for his fellow cancer warriors. Jim encouraged Chuck to grow his garden, and to make plans, and not let the cancer win.
"Jim would straighten me up. He's like a Marine sergeant," Chuck said. "He's the guy who has me always looking ahead about the next thing you're going to do. You don't sit and stew about being sick."
"Once you turned a corner, you started thinking positive," Jim said to him. "You've been a freight train ever since. And one day if cancer does kill us, and it might, we're going to die fighting."
Chuck still works three days a week. He makes plans to see his family in Vermont and to go on fishing and crabbing trips. He has a garden he now grows every year - his own victory garden. He is not quite certain if he is in remission or not, but he is now the captain of his ship. Not cancer.
"One of the things that cancer does to you, it makes you appreciate stuff that normal people don't appreciate," he said. "An example for me is the smell of hardwood smoke on a crisp fall day. That whiff of hardwood smoke, you just enjoy that. You enjoy it. When it's spring and you can smell the wet earth and you know, it's coming. You enjoy it more than the normal person, who probably doesn't even notice it."
Morrison, Chuck and other cancer warriors will be at the Heart of the City Church, 521 W. Emma Ave., this evening at 5 for An Evening of Hope, a community cancer support group for cancer patients and their caregivers.
Info: 818-2266 or email toseeanothersunrise@gmail.com.