Justin Andrews (April 22, 1980 – November 24, 2010)
Story by his wife, Kristy Andrews

PART ONE 
(Correction - when I said "I still keep in touch with that Oncologist and he recently told me that the news he had to deliver to us was the worst thing he's ever had to tell a patient." - I should have said Neurologist, for it was his Neurologist and not his Oncologist who delivered that news to us.)


PART TWO
NOTE: There is about 5 seconds of footage missing between Part Two and Three which is when I stated, "Justin's doctor came into his room and suggested we intubate Justin for the transfer home.  Intubate means they are going to..."


PART THREE 

PART FOUR COMING SOON!

 

14 years old – that’s how old my husband, Justin, was when he started smoking.   He would tell me that he started just because it appeared harmless and everyone was doing it.

 

16 years old – that’s how old he was when he beat out a senior for the quarterback position on the varsity football team.  He was also the star basketball player through high school.  Justin was the popular guy who everyone admired. He was handsome, kind, smart, and extremely athletic. He was the whole package.

 

18 years old – that’s how old he was when he graduated from High School and won the prestigious title of being an All American Scholar.  And now he was also of legal age to buy cigarettes.  He was smoking a pack or two a day. 

 
 

20 years old – that’s how old he was when he graduated from ECPI at the top of his class in Information Technology.  It’s also how old he was when we met and fell in love.  I was a non-smoker and hated the fact that he smoked.  He promised me every day that he would quit.

 

22 years old - that's how old he was when we got married.  I remember him going outside for a smoke in between our wedding and the reception dinner, and I also remember how disappointed I was that he didn't keep his promise.

25 years old – that’s how old he was when he got his dream job and started to work for the US Department of Justice in Information Technology. 

 

26 years old – that’s how old he was when he became a Daddy to a little boy named Jeffrey.  He didn’t want to reek of cigarettes when he held our newborn so he would change his clothes, brush his teeth and wash his hands after each smoke.  He desperately tried to quit, but he failed every time.

  

27 years old – that’s how old he was when we bought our dream home. Life was good.

I want you to think about that… in 10-15 years from now, where do you want to be?!  Chances are you would want exactly what Justin had… a spouse, a child, excelling in a great career, living in your dream home, driving fancy cars, and maybe even own a boat and a vacation spot at the lake like he did.  A life like that… well, it sounds pretty great, doesn’t it?!  Justin was at the top of the world.

 
28 years old – Justin finally quit smoking; he quit cold turkey and never looked back.  But, it was too late.  Just 4 months after he quit smoking he was diagnosed with Stage IV advanced lung cancer.

   

30 years old - Justin died leaving behind a wife, 4-year old son, a sister, a mother, a father, a grandmother, an 8-year old neice, and countless friends. 

His life doesn't sound so great anymore, does it?

I’m sure most of you think the same thing we did when you hear lung cancer.  You think that’s an old person disease, young people don’t get lung cancer.  Justin is proof that cancer does not care what age you are, what color you are, how much money you have… if you have a mother and father, brother or sister, or a spouse and child at home who love you and need you.  Cancer does not discriminate.  Lung cancer is the #1 cancer killer.  It kills more people than breast, colon, liver, skin, prostate, and kidney cancer combined. 

And if you’ve already started smoking, don’t think that you can just quit later.  That’s what Justin always thought and he simply couldn’t quit until it was too late.  By the time Justin was able to quit smoking; cancer had already invaded his lungs, liver, neck, shoulders, ribs, sternum, hips, and spine.

 

1 in 13 men and 1 in 18 women will get lung cancer in their lifespan.  Close to 90% of those diagnosed with lung cancer are current or past smokers.  The longer you smoke the more at risk you become for diseases like lung cancer and the harder it is to quit.  This doesn’t mean that everyone who gets lung cancer has smoked, and it doesn’t mean that everyone who smokes will get lung cancer, but the most proven best way to prevent lung cancer is to avoid smoking cigarettes and to avoid second hand smoke.  For the last two and a half years of Justin’s life, he wondered everyday if things would be different if he never picked up that first cigarette.

 

We found Justin’s cancer when a tumor in his neck grew so large that it was compromising his range of motion… basically he couldn’t turn his neck anymore.  Over the course of months he had visited a chiropractor and several doctors.  Cancer was the last thing that anyone thought could be causing his excruciating pain.  Finally an MRI was taken of his neck.  I was at work when Justin called to tell me the results.  He told me that they found a soft tissue mass in his neck.  I asked him what that meant and he said he didn’t know.  We both were thinking and dreading cancer, but neither of us would say it.  I tried to stay positive for him, but on the inside I was screaming and crying that this can’t be happening.  Because Justin and I thought we were invincible.  We thought that nothing bad could ever happen to us.  And all of the sudden all those small problems that I used to think were something huge were nothing.  My life… our life… really was perfect. I mean before all this my biggest worry was that we had hard water at the house.  Everything was put into perspective very quickly as this perfect world we lived in started to crumble.

 

More tests were ordered and before we knew it we were sitting in a stark white Duke patient room nervously waiting for a Neurologist to come tell us the results.  I actually still keep in touch with that Neurologist. Recently he confessed that in all his 30 years of being a doctor, the news he had to break to us was the hardest thing he’s ever had to tell a patient.   On that day, when the Neurologist entered the room I could see it in his worried and sad eyes that the news was not going to be bad, not going to be devestating... it was going to be catastrophic. Before he even said anything, I knew that my healthy, athletic, strong man of a husband had cancer.

 

He explained that the largest tumor was in Justin’s lung, leading them to believe that cancer started in his lung and has quickly spread. To give us an idea of the severity of Justin’s condition, he showed us the nuclear bone scan image.  A normal scan will look almost like a black shadow of your full body, and problem areas will show up as white spots.  The computer screen was turned towards us so we could see Justin’s scan.  What I saw was what looked like his shadow, yet dozens of little white light bulbs appeared to be glowing everywhere across the image.  But they weren’t light bulbs, they were tumors.  There were so many, we lost count.

 

As I sat there grabbing my husband’s hand trying to fight back the tears, all I could think about was our son and how much he needed his Daddy.  Instead of listening to what the doctor was saying, I kept looking to my left at Justin wondering how he was taking this.  His face was blank.  He was emotionless; I really think he was in utter shock.  I felt like we were in a nightmare… although, it wasn’t a dream.  This is life.  In an instant everything can change.

 

We were told that Justin would now be seeing an Oncologist (also known as a tumor doctor) and he would undergo a biopsy the following day to diagnose exactly what type of cancer he had and if it truly was cancer.  With a tear in his eye, the Neurologist shook our hands, wished us good luck, and then quietly left.   Justin and I were left in the room alone.  But all Justin wanted to do was escape; he took off towards the door and down the hall without saying a word.  When I rounded the corner from the hallway to the waiting room and saw Justin’s parents sitting there, those tears that I had been fighting started to fall.  There was no controlling my emotions anymore.   Justin went straight to checkout so it left me all alone to tell his parents that their son has cancer.  I couldn’t do it.  And I remember I took off running, right past them… tears streaming down my face and running.  I ran right out the door with his parents close on my heels.  I stopped right outside the door to clinic, I put my hands to my face and pretty much fell to my knees.  His parents were already a mess, and his mother picked up me and looked right in my face and pleaded for me to tell her what the doctor said.  I was sobbing so uncontrollably that I couldn’t even speak.  Finally I took some deep breaths and managed to say “It’s bad.  It’s really bad. Looks like cancer”.  I then just buried my face in my hands again and continued to cry as I listened to his mother repeat over and over again “It’s just not fair. It’s just not fair”.

 

We arrived home that night and had a pity party. Justin had been so strong through all of this, never shedding the first tear. But later that evening after the baby was put the bed, he broke down and finally confessed how scared he was.   This unfamiliar territory and unknown future was terrifying us beyond belief.

 

Over the course of the next week, I tried to understand what our chances were if in fact this was advanced lung cancer.  Everywhere I looked I got the same answer… I had a less than 5% chance that in five years from now my husband would be alive.  Think about that… a 5% chance.  5%!  It took almost a week to get the biopsy results back to confirm that Justin did indeed have lung cancer.  It was the longest week of our lives.  Finally he got the call we’d all been waiting for, and unfortunately the news was exactly like we expected.  Justin was told that a malignancy is present and he does have advanced Stage IV lung cancer.  Justin and I both knew that it was cancer, but I guess until the doctors actually call you and officially say those three little words “you have cancer”… it doesn’t seem real yet.  We received the call mid-afternoon when we both were at work.  Justin and I immediately left our offices, his mother went to daycare to get our son, and we all met back at Justin’s parent’s house.  I remember that day like it was yesterday. 

 

It took me thirty minutes to get to their house from my work, and I had cried all the way there.  As soon as I stepped foot into their home, round two of my tears started when I saw his mother and father sobbing.  I wanted to see my son and husband, so I quickly hugged them as I walked past them towards the back bedroom where I knew I would find Justin and Jeffrey.  Justin was sitting on the bed with his head in his hands and Jeffrey was sitting on the floor at Justin’s feet playing.  I sat down next to Justin and he leaned over and put his head on my shoulder.  He started crying and I remember word for word what he said to me.  Through his tears he said, “I love you.  You know this.  I love my mom and dad, and my family.  They know this.”, then he pointed to his son who wasn’t even two yet and said “but, he doesn’t know how much I love him, and I want to be here to tell him. Because the thought of not seeing him grow up scares the hell out of me”. 

 

Over the next two years Justin underwent constant radiation and chemotherapy.  He was in so much pain in his neck, shoulder, and spine that it took a total of 25 radiation sessions to destroy those tumors.  Eventually the cancer spread to his brain, and he endured 3 weeks of whole brain radiation as well.  Radiation is painless when administered, but the side effects are catastrophic.  Radiation is pretty much like receiving a really strong x-ray. The neck and spine radiation were the worst in terms of side-effects.  

 

For the neck treatments, the radiation destroyed the healthy lining in Justin’s throat, leaving his throat raw.  Justin explained to me later the way he felt… he said imagine the worst strep throat you’ve ever had, multiply that by ten, and then imagine that any liquid or food you eat is shards of glass that are lit on fire. For nine days he felt that way.  Drinking a simple Boost nutritional drink would make my 200lb husband fall to his knees in pain.  He not only lost his voice, but he lost 25 pounds and barely got out of bed for two weeks. 

 

For the spine treatments, the radiation entered through his back, targeting the tumors and then exiting his body through his chest.  His esophagus was caught in the middle and was literally burnt from the inside out.  This time Justin couldn’t eat for almost three weeks.  Once the food or liquid made it past his throat and entered his esophagus, he was in unbearable pain.  I asked him once what it felt like he said “torture. It felt like I was being tortured”.

     

As for the chemotherapy,  Justin was constantly on chemotherapy over the course of two years.  He experienced nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pains, hair loss… all the normal side-effects you think of when you hear “chemotherapy”.  Chemotherapy is different from radiation in the way that radiation only targets certain problem areas.  Chemotherapy attacks the cancer everywhere in your body.  For the most part, Justin got chemo through an IV.  Sometimes it took up to six hours to administer.  Chemotherapy is poison… flat out… it is a poison to your body.  There are hundreds of types of chemotherapy and not every chemo works for the same cancers.  Even for lung cancer, there are dozens of options for chemotherapy.   It’s a shot in the dark… you never know how your cancer is going to respond to the drug.  Each person, and each cancer responds differently.  The more I learned about cancer, the more I understood why there is no cure.  It is a complex and devastating disease.

 

 

Justin was lucky.  We found one chemotherapy drug cocktail that he was able to ride out for 18 months.  Most chemotherapy only works for a small number of months before you have to switch treatments because the cancer becomes resistant to the drug.  One year after diagnosis, that drug cocktail had eliminated the cancer in Justin’s body.  But his remission days were short-lived before the cancer came back.  He went back on the potent drug cocktail for another eight months until we realized our days on that drug had come to an end.  Less than a month after filming the TRU public service announcements that air across our state we found out that his cancer had become resistant to the drugs and it was back with a vengeance.   We discovered that it had exploded in his lungs, spread to his brain, again invaded his liver, and was taking residence in new places in his bones.

 

In October of 2010 everything started to go really wrong and downhill just two weeks after our son turned four. Justin came home from work one Friday in mid-October with stomach discomfort.  And little did he know that when he left work that Friday, he would never return.

 

Justin had stomach pain all weekend but didn’t want to go to the ER, so he waited until Monday morning rolled around and we then went to go see his Oncologist.  They admitted him to the hospital overnight for further testing.  The results were that a lymph node near his liver had swollen so large that it was pressing against his bile duct causing a complete obstruction.  He had a metal stent placed and was released from the hospital almost a week after being admitted.  The following week was Halloween and we had a family trip to Disney World planned to celebrate our son’s 4th birthday.  His doctors all saw no reason why Justin couldn’t or shouldn’t take the trip, and just advised us to rent a scooter so that Justin wouldn’t have to walk.  So, we boarded an airplane and took the trip.  This proved to be one of the best decisions we had ever made, yet also one of the worst.

 

 

We finished our Disney vacation as planned.  Justin had been having a tough time the whole week, with the last few days of the vacation proving to be the worst in terms of breathing difficulty.  But, he was determined that he was going to finish that vacation for me and for our son.  The day before we were scheduled to fly home, we had literally finished the last park when Justin went into breathing distress.  We called an ambulance and he was rushed to the hospital.  It took the nurses and doctors a few hours to get Justin’s breathing under control.  I remember feeling so helpless, because here we are in a hospital 600 miles away from home with no familiar faces.  
 

They diagnosed Justin as having double pneumonia.  Possibly something he picked up during the trip, or maybe even in the hospital two weeks prior when he had the stent placed.   They started him on the standard antibiotics and breathing treatments.  Justin’s mom and sister arrived in Orlando the following day. 

 

After being there a week, Justin was recovering nicely so his mom and sister felt comfortable going back to North Carolina and taking Jeffrey with them.   Within 24 hours of them leaving Justin took a turn for the worst, and the doctors there were clueless as to why his health continued to decline.  I started heavily pursuing an air ambulance transfer back to Duke.   We were going on two weeks that we had been in the Orlando hospital, and there was no doubt in my mind that if he stayed there any longer it would be catastrophic. 

 

The morning before we were scheduled to leave for a transfer to Duke, the doctor came in and suggested that we intubate Justin for the transfer.  Intubate means that he would be sedated, have a breathing tube stuck down his throat, and a machine would help him breathe.   We agreed this would be the best option to get Justin back to Duke safely and more importantly… alive.  After the doctor left, I couldn’t keep it together any longer in front of Justin.  I was sitting on the side of his bed, rubbing his feet and crying.  I tried so hard to be strong around him and to never let him see me cry, but this was all just too much to bear.  As weak as he was, he sat up and slid next to me and put his head on my shoulder.  I remember the last time he put his head on my shoulder like that was the date of diagnosis, which at this point was a little over two years ago.  We sat on the side of that hospital bed for several minutes with his head on my shoulder and my head resting on top of his.  I think in our hearts we both knew that once he was intubated, he probably wasn’t going to wake up.  We never said a word to each other during those few minutes, and to this day I cherish that time with him more than you’ll ever know.  Because I guess sometimes you really can say it best when you say nothing at all.

 

It was just minutes after our silent time together that he was rushed to ICU. His breathing became more and more labored every hour. Intubating Justin turned into an emergency situation when his heart rate dropped after a breathing treatment.  Thankfully, after he was sedated and intubated his stats improved and he was ready for the transfer home.  However, I was emotionally and physically drained.  I don’t think I could have cried another tear if I tried… I was officially dried up.

 

On Sunday, November 21^st we boarded an ICU air ambulance and headed home, arriving late that evening at Duke.  Upon arriving at Duke, we were informed that Justin had lost fifty pounds over the course of the past four weeks… he was literally skin and bones.

 

The next day was an emotional roller coaster.  We were told that they found a new source of infection that the doctors in Orlando completely missed.  It was Justin’s gallbladder.  Apparently it had become infected and failed as a result of the bile duct obstruction.  The new plan was to remove his gallbladder and hit Justin with everything they had in terms of antibiotics.   I started to have hope again that maybe… just maybe we could fix this.

 

And then our good news was blanketed with more bad news.  We were also told that Justin’s left lung was collapsed.  The cancer had become too advanced.  A mass in his bronchial tube had completely obstructed his airway to his left lung.  Plus his right lung was now filled with thick mucus from the gallbladder infection that was spreading through his body.  Justin was in bad shape, and the breathing machine now had to work a little bit harder to keep Justin alive.

 

The morning after his gallbladder was removed; we actually saw a little improvement in Justin. It seemed the antibiotics were working and we were in discussion with an intervention team to insert a stent into his left lung bronchial tube in an effort to open back up the airway.  However, Justin had now been intubated longer than anyone anticipated so the doctors were forced to change his sedation, leaving Justin in almost a coma-like state.

 

Around 1:00pm that day, Justin’s blood pressure started to drop.  Slowly over the next hour it continued to fall.  I was in the room with him when the nurse called rapid response because there was no heartbeat.  She calmly looked at me and said “Kristy, honey… I can’t find a pulse.  I need you to step out of the room”.  I looked at her in shock, covered my mouth with my hands and just stood there. My legs were like concrete.  I could not move.  And I didn’t move until someone ended up pushing me out of the room.  I took off running out of ICU and towards the waiting room where I knew I would find his family and my mom.  I couldn’t even speak.  I stood in the doorway of the waiting room staring at them looking as white as a ghost.  I waved my arms motioning for them to come with me quickly and then I ran back down the hallway towards the open doorway of his ICU room.  Justin’s parents and my mom were running after me screaming “What happened? What happened?”.  I didn’t know the answer, because I truly had no idea what happened. As I stopped in front of Justin’s ICU room, all I could say to them was “his heart stopped”.  

 

I stood there in the doorway of Justin’s room with my legs now felling like Jell-O.  I was shaking uncontrollably and could barely even stand. My mother stood behind me literally holding me up as I kept saying over and over again “come on, baby… come on, baby… come on, baby”.  I just wanted him to come back.  You would think that I would be focused on the swarm of people hovering over my husband doing chest compressions, but I wasn’t.  Instead my eyes were locked on the monitor beside his bed that had a flat line running across it next to the little symbol of a heart.  And quickly my attention was drawn away from the monitor and I was focused on someone running down the long, narrow ICU hallway towards us.

 

It was Justin’s sister.  She was actually around the corner from the waiting room talking with friends when we all took off.  There was no time for any of us to get her, but thankfully somehow she got word that something was wrong.  The memory of her coming down that hall was like what you see in the movies.  I heard her yell down the hallway “What happened?!”. Our eyes locked and I told her “he’s gone”. She fell to her knees in the middle of the hallway screaming “Nooooo!  Noooo!”.  Over the course of two years, I had tried so hard to protect his family from this ugly disease called cancer.  I tried so hard to sugar coat everything, to put a positive spin on every situation.  But, I couldn’t shield them from this. I couldn’t shield them from death.

 

As my mother continued to wrap her loving arms around me, I quickly turned my focus away from his family and I stared back at the monitor repeating my chant of “come on, baby”.  It’s all I could say. I didn’t want to believe that this was the end. 

 

I saw a pulse appear on the monitor, and my heart skipped a beat as I caught my breath hoping and praying that Justin was back with us. He was revived. All you heard from us in the hallway was cheers and screams of “He’s back. He’s back”.   But, it took them over eight minutes to revive him… eight minutes of no oxygen to his brain.  He was off sedation and completely unresponsive.   Our cheers quickly returned to tears as our family was pulled into a conference room with the doctors. I quickly realized that when a team of doctors walk in with seven boxes of tissues, they don’t have good news.

 

We were told that Justin developed a blood clot near his heart causing it to stop and that Justin won’t recover from this.  We were told that the only reason his heart is beating right now is because they injected him with some medicine to make it pump.  We were told that we need to make a decision as a family on whether or not we want to “pull the plug”.  We were told that we should be prepared to tell him good-bye.

 

Anger set in for me.  I remember being in complete denial, and even storming out in the middle of meeting with the doctors to go see my husband.  I couldn’t believe that this was happening, and I was furious.  I was angry that I was going to end up a widow, and even angrier that my son would be fatherless. I was mad at cancer, and I was mad at cigarettes.   But it wasn’t until Justin’s Oncologist arrived that I was able to find some acceptance, and get my head back on straight.  Justin’s Oncologist is the Chief of Medical Oncology at Duke, and over the course of two years he became very emotionally attached to our family.  I can honestly say that he wasn’t just our doctor… he was our friend.

 

Justin’s Oncologist sat down with me and explained that it appears the brain radiation didn’t work.  He reminded me that Justin never wanted to hear those words “there’s nothing else we can do for you”, which is probably what he would have had to eventually tell him.  He reminded me that Justin never wanted hospice called in, he never wanted to know that he was going to die.  He reminded me that Justin was sleeping when his heart stopped… he felt no pain, and he did not suffer.  He reminded me that if Justin was going to lose this battle, this is exactly what he would want to happen… he would want to be sleeping and to be surrounded by the ones who loved him the most.

 

It took several hours for our family to compose ourselves.  We would all take turns walking back to Justin’s room to say good-bye and to tell him the last few things on our heart.  The toughest to watch was his mother.  She couldn’t accept this.  A child is not supposed to die before the parents. She kept squeezing his hand and pleading with him to squeeze it back… she kept crying and saying “no… no… not my baby”.  It was heart wrenching.  When I got my time with Justin, I didn’t have a lot to say.  And I think it was because we had no words left unsaid.  We knew how much we loved each other and that was enough for me.  I did however promise him that day that I would spread his story far and wide, and make sure that our son knows how much his Daddy loved him.  I promised him that I would make sure our son knows that his Daddy is a hero who shared his story before he died to help save lives.

 

When the time came to witness Justin’s final heartbeat, we each took a turn to kiss his lifeless head one last time.  Then I took one hand and his mother took the other as we watched the nurse turn the breathing machine off.  And at 6:08pm on November 24, 2010 Justin Andrews was pronounced dead. 

 

It was the day before Thanksgiving in 2010 that he passed away.  As all of you were enjoying Thanksgiving dinner, watching the parade and football games with your families… I was planning my husband's funeral and explaining to a four-year old why Daddy won't be coming home, whose only response was "who's going to be my Daddy now?".  Last year on Thanksgiving marked the one year anniversary of his death.  As I woke up and started my day on this past Thanksgiving, I couldn’t get it out of my head where I was a year ago. So much had happened in a year, he had missed so much of our lives. The first song I heard that day, spoke volume to me. I’ve heard it dozens of times before but on that day I listened a little closer to the words.  The song was ‘If I die young’.  She says “Funny, when you’re dead how people start listening”. The unfortunate truth in those words is immeasurable.

 

 

 

Not a day that goes by that I don’t think of Justin and miss him more than words can say.  Jeffrey and I spend many hours visiting Justin’s crematory column at the cemetery, sending up kisses and balloons to Daddy.  I’m sure when most of you were four years old, you were able to give your Daddy the pictures you drew for him, and the cards you made.  My son will never again be able to do that.  Now he sends his materpeices to heaven in a balloon, he blow his kisses into the sky, and he throws his hugs into the air in hopes that they will reach his Daddy in heaven.  

With time it doesn't mean that we forget, or even that it gets easier.  It just means we adapt.  Jeffrey and I have simply learned to adapt to a life without Daddy.  Jeffrey started playing basketball, and at every game I thought "wow, Justin would have loved this".  He would have loved nothing more than to teach his son how to dribble a basketball and how to shoot a three-pointer.

 

But, we can’t go back and change the past. As much as we all wish we could, we just can’t.  We only get one body here on this Earth...  just one.  Take care of  it.  Treasure your good health, because trust me when I say that good health is not something to take for granted. 

The decisions you make today don't affect just you.  Isn't it crazy to think that one decision has the potention to change your entire life?  One decision can in the long-term also affect your future spouse, unborn child, mother, father,  grandparents, siblings, and even neices and nephews?  I'm left without a husband, my son without a father, Justin's parents without a son, his grandmother without a grandson, his sister without a brother, and his neice without an uncle.  One decision.

I encourage you all to go to www.realityunfiltered.com and join over 13,000 other teens across NC who have signed the pledge to remain tobacco-free, or if you are already a current smoker please visit www.quitlinenc.com and start now traveling a road to better health.  TRU is also in jeopardy of losing all funding in June 2012.  Be a voice - go to www.ncforhealth.org and help save the TRU program.

You’re going to be faced with peer pressure to smoke, drink, and use drugs… it’s going to happen.  But whatever it might be that you face in life...  I want you to remember Justin’s story.  I want you to remember that you are not invincible, what happened to Justin can happen to anyone.  YOU ARE NOT INVINCIBLE! We are only human.  So go make today count and go make good decisions.