Note: Names have been changed to retain the anonymity of the entities/individual.
At 24, Ezequiel Chaim, a native of Lilongwe, Malawi, left his hometown for the “land of the free” in 1967. As an illegal immigrant, Ezequiel ended up in Midland, Michigan where he stayed with a friend who helped him find work there.
Ezequiel felt content for the relative good fortune he had by finding an appropriate job as a construction worker that made his both ends meet. His work at Machete Construction was to roof the tops, labor at the site and drywall the structure. He was working as hard as he could, saving his earned money bit by bit, and taking classes to improve his English.
Years passed and Ezequiel began feeling that something was missing in his life until he met Reese. In 1974, at a friend’s party, Ezequiel first saw Reese. There was an intimacy at first sight. It dawned to Ezequiel that she was the woman he had been waiting for and with whom he would spent the rest of his life. After four months of seeing each other, Ezequiel finally proposed to Reese on 21 September, 1974.
A year after they married, Ezequiel found his dream job at the Sow Chemical Company that offered him benefits, vacations and a retirement plan. The Chaims were happy and believed they could start a family, a life, on this job. Much to their gratitude, they were gravely unaware of the monster that Ezequiel was inhaling ever since he arrived in America, asbestos.
After taking the job at Sow Chemical Company, Ezequiel and Rene established themselves by buying their dream house in the suburbs. They began a family, raising two boys, James and John. Ezequiel was satisfied. His life was complete. He began loving his life each day and became very health-conscious to overcome the fear of losing his beloved ones. But all of his dreams were shattered at the end of the winter of 2000, when he began to experience abnormal heaviness on the back of his right side. The heaviness made Ezequiel suffered with immense pain and often he felt as though he was having a heart attack. This situation further caused a pressure on his bladder too, which forced him to urinate six to eight times in a day.
Reese set an appointment with their family physician in March of 2001. Ezequiel was asked to have chest x-rays in order to diagnose his situation. The chest films confirmed a right-sided pleural effusion. Ezequiel had a right-sided thoracentesis from his back by means of a twenty-gauge needle. Over a liter of semi-pinkish fluid was taken out, which was sent for cytological tests. The tests result came negative for malignancy.
On May 28 the same year, another thoracentesis was conducted on Ezequiel. Doctors at Henry Ford Medical Center, Ann Arbor, sucked out another liter of fluid from Ezequiel that was again tested negative for malignancy. The doctors could not conclude as to what was making the fluid come back. They further advised Ezequiel to take a biopsy test.
Ezequiel underwent a right thoracoscopy on June 02, 2000 with pneumolysis and partial decortication, a right parietal pleural biopsy, and a fiberoptic bronchoscopy. During the procedure, the surgeon noticed small white spots covering the pleura. He eradicated biopsy samples, which were sent to the laboratory for pathology. The samples were eight inch in diameter. On June 13, the laboratory results diagnosed Ezequiel with malignant mesothelioma.
Ezequiel was instantly referred to Dr. David Davies of the Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit, Michigan. Ezequiel met with Dr. Davies on June 23. After reviewing Ezequiel’s medical records and reports, Dr. Davies told him that he had good chances of surviving and was in a good condition for surgical intervention.
On July 3, 2000, Ezequiel underwent an extra-pleural pneumonectomy. With no complications encountered during post-surgical period, Ezequiel was sent home on July 14. In the beginning of August, Ezequiel started copper chelate chemotherapy to stop the tumor’s growth. Nowadays, Ezequiel is doing fine with the continued chemotherapy. Although he is not sure how much more time he has, he sure is fighting hard against this terrible disease. |
