Richard Middleton:  

MThe picture is of me & my late wife who passed away 8/19/2007. I was not a happy camper in high school.I had a lot of problems with my family and it showed in my attitude.Was a little wild up until I was about 25.I finally married a woman who didn,t have any issues to resolve or any baggage to haul around.Life has been very good ever since.The biggest plus in my life was moving out of Watsonville! Workplace I worked in the aerospace manufacturing until 1974.At that time I started my own bussiness called CAR COSMETICS.I worked mainly with new car dealers,adding accessories to new cars.Here in southern calif. its a very competitive bussiness.It was a very good living for 22 years.I,m now semi-retired. Military The Navy is a tough life.I wouldnt recommend it to anybody.If I had to do it over I would join the air force. The only thing I enjoyed about the navy was seeing Europe.I went into the navy when I was 17.I could have spent my time being more in tune with what I was doing,but all I wanted was to do my time and get the hell out of there. My wife passed away because the doctor,s missed her colon cancer.I moved to Utah (tryin to make some sense of life)Got here on April 1st 2008-was diagnoed with colon cancer April 5 2008. Life has taken a few weird turns for me lately. I,m in Utah staying with family while I try to work thru colon cancer-I had 2 months of chemo & Radiation treatments (radiation is horrific)-5 hours of surgery to get rid of the cancer-2 months of recuperation and I,m scheduled to go back in the middle of August for one more operation. The doctors all say I,m going to be completely cancer free when they are done.The worst part is the weakness-I have absolutely no energy anymore.I,ve only lost about ten pounds thru all of this,but if any of you remember me-I cant afford to lose that.So far its been 4 months that I,ve been down-the docs say it will be another 8 months before I,m back in shape.I,ve always been in control of my life-its strange to be in this position.A word of warning to all of you out there-GET A COLONOSCOPY EVERY YEAR-I was lucky,for some reason the cancer started bleeding and I went in to find out what was up.If I had,nt ,it would have kept growing and eventually killed me. Okay-an up-date. Its now the end of October & I,m still stuck in Utah fighting this cancer. I,ve just had my final surgery. Was supposed to be in the hospital 2 days,wound up being 7 days. Picked up an infection & now I have to deal with that for another month or two. Unless you want to lose a year out of your life & go thru pure misery for that year get a colonoscopy - if there,s cancer & they catch it early they can laser it out right then. If its been there a while you are going to be in pain for at least a year because of the chemotherapy & the radiation & the surgery.The pain from all of this is unbelievable-every day you wake up wishing you could just stop breathing and let it all be over with.Thank God for my family & friends-without them I wouldn,t have gotten thru this. Another update-its November 2008 and I,m still down. Absolutely unbelievable what cancer can do to you. I,ve not had one decent day since April of 2008.It looks like this is going to go on for at least another 4 months.I,ve got a scar that is 15 inches long running down my chest , another one thats about 8 inches long on my side. The one on my side is taking forever to heal.Its gonna look horrific even then.Cant repeat this enough--GET A COLONOSCOPY-the alternative is winding up like me-losing an entire year of your life to pure misery every day.I,m no different than most of you out there-my wife died from colon cancer in August of 2007-we were both living like most people-never giving a thought to something like colon cancer.Its a little late for us, but not for you--- DO IT!!! One last update-it is now March of 2009-I,m now cancer free & all of the incisions are healed. The inside of my body is taking its time healing. I,m hitting the gym next month to try & regain my strength back.Figure its gonna take a while. Meanwhile I,m still stuck in Utah.I can easily afford to live here on my retirement-BUT- I want badly to move back to SoCal,I,m going to do it as soon as I,m able to work.I lived in SoCal for a lot of years & have a lot of friends there. My kids both live there too.When I move back there I,ll post it here. One cool thing about my cancer is...Expand for more