Former city council member shares her husband’s cancer battle
It’s been six and a half years since Fran Palochak’s husband Rick Palochak died, but she still remembers every detail of his battle with small cell lung cancer. And she wants people to take their story as a sign to go see a doctor right away if they’re not feeling well.
THE BATTLE BEGINS
The Palochaks’ journey with cancer began in January 2017 when Rick started coughing excessively. They thought he might just have a sinus infection, and when he went to the doctor, they sent him home with some antibiotics.
But the medicine didn’t help; Rick still kept coughing and coughing. In February, he went back to the doctor to tell them the antibiotics hadn’t worked. They then gave him a different antibiotic to try.
Fran said it was a struggle to even get her husband into the doctor in the first place.
“He was one of those guys who just didn’t like to go to the doctor at all,” she said.
Then, in March, his mother became ill and was sent to the hospital. Despite Fran’s concerns over his own health, Rick insisted he needed to stay with his mother in the hospital. She died later that month.
Meanwhile, Fran said Rick was still avoiding his own health concerns. She said he often wouldn’t come to bed during that time, choosing instead to sit in a recliner in their living room. He wasn’t sleeping much due to the coughing.
He finally returned to the doctor in April, where they referred him to an Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor. He was starting to lose his voice and he soon found out why.
The Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor broke the news: Rick had a tumor near his vocal cords. The tumor was pressing on his larynx. This caused the coughing and his voice loss.
Once he received the difficult diagnosis, Rick decided to retire from his position as the director of the McKinley County Bureau of Elections. Fran helped him write his letter of resignation.
The Palochaks’ next few months were filled with doctor’s appointment after doctor’s appointment. Fran reflected on the strain all of that put on her.
“When you’re a caregiver, you have to pay attention to what the doctor is saying,” she said. “There’s no time for emotion because you have to write notes.”
The doctors explained that Rick’s type of cancer didn’t have a “stage” like breast cancer or brain cancer. It was too aggressive for that.
Fran took Rick to every appointment he had during that time despite her busy schedule. She ran for city council in 2014 — at Rick’s suggestion — and often juggled her council responsibilities with his multiple appointments.
THE CONDITION WORSENS
By the middle of 2017, Rick was having trouble eating because of the location of the tumor. He lost 30 pounds in a couple of months, and he just kept getting weaker and weaker.
Fran described what losing all that weight did to Rick.
“When you’re in the battle and you don’t have enough weight, it just makes you worse,” Fran said.
Meanwhile, Fran was just trying to keep everything straight. She kept a spreadsheet that listed all of Rick’s medications and tried to help him find a solution for his nausea. They experimented with multiple ginger products, from ginger candies to ginger beer. Eventually, a friend who also had cancer, Lydia Mazon, recommended Rick try medical marijuana. They signed him up for a medical prescription right away.
After months of driving to and from Albuquerque for chemotherapy, the doctors finally had some good news: Rick’s tumor was shrinking. To celebrate, the Palochaks stopped at a casino restaurant on the way home so Rick could have some prime rib. Fran said he couldn’t eat much of it, but that didn’t matter. That was Rick’s last time eating real food.
Despite the tumor shrinkage, Rick’s condition just kept getting worse and worse.
When Veteran’s Day, Nov. 11, 2017, rolled around, Fran tried to make it a typical day. Rick and Fran were both veterans, and she had plans to go to Gallup’s ceremony just like they always did. She kissed Rick goodbye and told him she’d be back after the parade.
But things took a turn for the worse when she came back home.
Rick’s coughing had only worsened, and now he was coughing up blood. As soon as Fran saw this, she rushed him to the hospital. The doctors diagnosed Rick with pneumonia.
He was flown to Albuquerque and received treatment there. He spent a whole month in the hospital, with 10 days on an incubator to help him breathe. Fran said he was “as weak as a puppy” at that point.
The doctors tried to get Rick to do physical therapy to help him gain his strength back, but Fran said he was just too weak to do the exercises. No rehab centers would take him because he couldn’t even walk to the bathroom on his own.
Finally, the doctors gave him two options: they could treat the pneumonia, and he could go home, or he could go into hospice care. Rick chose hospice care.
He was in hospice for one week before he passed away on Dec. 17, 2017.
After watching her husband fight cancer and struggling to keep her head up during that difficult time, Fran has one message for people: an early cancer diagnosis can save someone’s life.
“What I can say for people, especially men because men tend to ignore everything that’s going on with them, they think they can get over anything without seeing a doctor. So, I encourage men, when you start having symptoms of coughing or being sick, insist on going back to the doctor right away if you don’t get better on antibiotics and insist that something’s wrong,” she said.
Rick didn’t receive an official diagnosis until about four months after his intense coughing began. Fran thinks an earlier diagnosis and detection could have made a big difference for her husband.
“I don’t know if that would’ve helped, but it certainly could’ve helped,” she said.
Fran’s one key message to anyone when it comes to cancer: early detection. Discovering the cancer early gives people a higher chance of finding the proper treatment and beating the cancer.
FRAN’S INVOLVEMENT WITH RELAY FOR LIFE
Fran and Rick were involved in Relay for Life way before he was diagnosed. They joined the Relay group Singing Survivors, which was made up of choir members from the St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, after Mazon started the group. Mazon has been on her own cancer journey for 10 years now.
And even though Rick lost his battle with cancer, Fran still stays involved in Relay for Life.
“I still stay involved in Relay for Life because I’m hoping they’ll find a cure someday and nobody will go through what I’ve gone through,” she explained.
This will be Fran’s third year as the chair of Gallup’s Survivor’s Committee. One of her duties is helping organize gift bags for all the survivors.
“It’s good to celebrate them because we want people who are diagnosed with cancer — because that is the most devastating news — to know that it’s not a death sentence,” Fran said. “You can survive for many years.”
Anyone interested in donating to a local Relay for Life team can go to the Gallup McKinley County fundraising page at https://secure.acsevents.org/site/STR?pg=entry&fr_id=107767.
The webpage also has details about this year’s Relay for Life, which is scheduled for June 14.
By Molly Ann Howell
Managing Editor
