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David Payne faces death-and life-head on
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| By: James Williams, Monitor Editor |
October 16, 2008 |
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David Payne, pyrotechnician, pilot, air traffic controller, scuba diver and cancer patient.
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Lake Region resident David Payne, who was 58 in August, is dying. He isn't sure when, and he said his doctors have been careful not to make any predictions. At least not to him. When he was first diagnosed, a doctor told his parents he had six months to live. That was back in 2005.
"They just tell me, 'Everybody's different,'" he said, and that annoys him.
Recently, he told his oncologist he wanted to go to Egypt next April to see the Sphinx and the pyramids. It was something he had always wanted to do. The doctor told him to go sooner, rather than later.
"I've been fine up till now," Payne said, "but they put doubts into me and I get depressed. Mentally I start thinking differently." And after a pause he adds, "I may snap out of this. "
Payne comes from a Jacksonville family with five kids. His father worked for the railroad, his mother was a housewife. He graduated from Andrew Jackson High School, went on to the Florida Community College of Jacksonville, and finished at the University of Florida with a degree in journalism and public relations.
Working his way through college, he gassed up small aircraft at the Jacksonville International Airport.
In 1975 he became an air traffic controller and worked at JaxARTC for almost 26 years, retiring in January 2001. His specialty, he said, was guiding the flights in high altitude sectors.
Early on, he bought a one-story, lake front house from his mother-in-law on White Sands Lake.
Each work day, Payne made the 80-mile circuitous trek to Hilliard and back. "I took the back ways," he said. "It was quiet and scenic and there wasn't much traffic."
The one-story lakefront house got remodeled, and so did his marriage. The house now has two floors, a rec room, several dining rooms and breakfast nooks, a deck that overlooks a swimming pool and more.
The divorce was amicable. In fact, last weekend his ex-wife and her husband were coming over for dinner. His son, Raleigh, is now out of school and is a department manager at a new Gainesville mega-store.
Throughout his work life, he volunteered in the Lake Region community. "Any children's playground in the area that's built from wood, I probably built it," he said.
For several years, he trimmed and cleaned the grounds at Keystone Elementary School, and once was Volunteer or the Year.
He traveled around the U.S., to Alaska and twice to Hawaii, to Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the lower 48 states. He toured England, France, Germany amd Pakistan. He is a licensed, a parachutist and a scuba diver.
For the last decade, it was Payne who assembled Our Country Day's annual collection of July 4th fireworks and set them off.
But in October of 2005, he and Raleigh were returning from the Scottish games near Atlanta, when Payne got a bit of a tummy ache. It wasn't anything severe, he said, but it persisted for several days. He decided he had developed an ulcer and went to see a general practitioner. At first, he was given a clean bill of health, and no ulcers were detected. There were spots on his liver, he was later told, but these were common in older people.
There were, however, components in his blood sample that were elevated. He mentioned all this to his sister, an RN, and she told him to see a liver specialist, which he did. This time, he got a CAT scan and a colonoscopy, which showed total occlusion. His colon cancer had already attacked his liver.
"I've got some good news and some bad news," the oncologist told him. "You've got cancer, but we can fix it."
Being a take-charge kind of guy, Payne wanted a second opinion.
"You can't wait around talking about this, we have to do it," the doctor told him.
The following Monday, he was admitted for surgery at Shands UF. Payne made it clear to the hospital staff that he wanted to leave as quickly as possible. He went in at the beginning of the week and they removed at least 10 inches of his colon. After a brief chat about follow-up chemotherapy, he walked out the hospital door the following Friday.
"I'm a pretty insistent person," he said. "I told them, I want out of here today."
He was to have recuperated from surgery for four weeks, but again grew impatient. He arranged for his chemo to begin early.
"I want to get going so you can make me well again," he told them.
Months later, Payne learned he was already at stage four metastasis the day he walked in with a stomachache.
"There are four stages of metastasis," he said. "At stage four, it can't be fixed."
Since then, Payne's life has been filled with cancer maintenance procedures and weekly, even daily, chemotherapy sessions, each of which has cost $30- to $40 thousand dollars. He has a stack of medical insurance statements at least an inch high. He said he has no idea how much it has cost to keep him alive and wonders how, or if, those without insurance could possibly survive.
On the other hand, he's traveled, he's worked; he's had a social life. He hasn't felt all that bad, he said. He's gotten better, he's gotten worse. Recently he got a cough.
Two weeks ago, a CAT scan revealed another metastatic tumor on his liver, which had spread to his spine, his L3 lumbar he said, and the spots on his lungs, while still small, are too numerous for radiation.
The medical teams have stopped his chemo because they've killed all the weaker cancer cells, and only the stronger ones are left. The irony is, Payne said, that chemotherapy weakens strong cells momentarily, but doesn't kill them. They grow stronger still after they are attacked.
The doctors say they can take care of the liver and spinal spots, but there's not much they can do for his lungs, Payne said.
Payne has the gaunt, thin look of someone who is very ill, but then, at about six feet, he's always been thin. "These days I weigh about 175," he said.
Recently, he jumped into his swimming pool to cool off and had some sort of attack. "My body felt like it was on fire and I froze up, paralyzed," he said. Only by wiggling himself to the shallow end of the pool was he able to keep himself from drowning.
His cough seems to have improved with cough drops, but it's still there.
He was angry at first, he said, but he's over that now. He spends his days by himself in his large house, but friends and family drop in once each week or two. Occasionally, he has a house full of people.
He's taking care of things. Belongings have been packed away in boxes. Assets are gradually being transferred to his son. He's working with a real estate dealer who will wait for two months and, when Raleigh gives the signal, will put the house on the market. He's already filled out the forms to stop his pension payments. All Raleigh has to do is mail them in.
While he plans to assemble and fire off the 2009 Our Country Day fireworks display, Payne's being cautious: he's training a replacement now.
"I'm fine for the most part," he said. "But I'm glad the new TV season is starting. Sometimes things get to me over the weekends."
If there is a bright side, he said, it is that these days he eats any of those foods he's always been told are forbidden.
"I can't tell you how much bacon I eat now and never think about it," he said. He's discovered that he especially enjoys cherry pie filling eaten straight from the can.
He's still thinking about taking that packaged tour to Egypt. He hasn't told the travel agency that he may have medical needs, and they haven't asked. But he is thinking of taking out travel insurance in case he has to come home suddenly.
"You've had a large, full life," his brother told him.
"But instead of checking out of the luxury resort at 8 a.m., I'd prefer not to have to check out until 11," he told his brother. He has no regrets.
"I'm not really a religious person," Payne said. "But many of my friends are. And I am comforted by the people who have told me they've put me on their prayer lists and included my name in their prayer circles. And I tell them, 'thank you' for that."
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©Bradford County Telegraph 2010
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