Laurie Singer’s husband was diagnosed with colon cancer and soon she became his caregiver. To help him process, Leroy launched the My Cancer blog.

Listen

Transcript

I’m Laurie Singer. I was born in. The caregiver to Leroy Seavers, my husband. Leroy was 53 years old when he passed away from colon cancer. Leroy was a huge life. Big man, big voice, almost 6’5 He used his largeness and he needed to in his job. He was a war correspondent and a very talented producer in the news business.

He loved his work. He went in for a routine colonoscopy. He was diagnosed with colon cancer, and had a resection. And they told him to go home and have a good life because everything was good to go. And everything was good to go for four and a half years. They found a mass in his brain. They also found some tumors in his lungs.

A friend of his in the business had heard about his diagnosis. So he asked Leroy to write a couple of things and do a couple of commentaries about his cancer on NPR. So he did, and the response was huge. Something magical happened. There was an instant connection. And people responded, said, We would like to hear more.

And that’s when my cancer was created. The way he was able To describe living with cancer on a daily basis was so therapeutic to so many people. How in the world is this one man, how is he so able to connect to all of us, those of us who aren’t suffering from cancer? We still want to read him because he just has this ability to describe his humanity through this horrible disease.

And for the people who are suffering with cancer. It was so ordinary for them to email him and say, I feel exactly how you feel. Now I can say to my husband or my son or my daughter, Come and read this. And now you know how to, Respond to me if I am not feeling well, if I’m grumpy today. I remember a family that drove for hours, who came to our door one day.

They just wanted to leave balloons and some candy, just to say thank you, because they were going through it with their daughter. And the only thing that really helped was Leroy’s blog. They would read it together every morning. The responses were so encouraging. I think at times it was difficult for him to think that so many people were weighing every word that he put down on that blog.

You change when cancer comes into your world. For him to put down his feelings, Helped him get through each day. A day doesn’t go by without Leroy popping up in my head. I can’t tell you how many times I think about driving to the airport and the doors open and I just see this big guy coming out with two weeks or three weeks worth of a beard, looking pretty scroungy.

And there was such a good man underneath all of that. And together we had a great life.