The Homer King. Larry Fournier

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      CHAPTER ONE

      The Family

      It was a Saturday morning in May 2017, and Blain Duncan’s cell phone was ringing. As he picked it up, he noted that the time was 7:35 a.m. As it was a nonworking day, Blain was trying to enjoy some extra sleep time, so he was somewhat annoyed to observe that the early caller was his older brother Kyle, who lived in their hometown of Burley, Idaho. Blain thought, Why couldn’t he have respected that hour time-zone difference and called me at a decent time?

      “Hey, man, what’s with the early call?” Blain inquired with a little testy strain in his voice.

      “Blain, it’s Dad. He went in for medical tests in Twin Falls yesterday, and he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. The doctors think it is possibly stage III level. Mom and all of us are still in shock. Sorry we did not call you last night, but we weren’t exactly thinking clearly on how to deal with this shocking news.”

      “That’s terrible. How bad is it? Is it going to be treatable?” Blain inquired.

      Kyle replied that their dad was due to go back to the clinic the following Tuesday, and they would be better informed on a course of action then. He promised he would get back to Blain after the next doctor’s visit and give him an update. Kyle suggested that Blain should call home and talk to their mom and dad directly.

      “Good idea, Kyle. I’ll do that today.”

      “What’s wrong?” Blain’s wife, Alene, asked, as she was now awake and hearing only one end of the conversation.

      “It’s Dad—he has cancer, and it doesn’t sound good.”

      “What! That’s awful,” she replied. “So what can we do about it besides lots of prayers?”

      Blain told her that he had no knowledge yet if it could be treated but said that his father would be going back to the clinic in Twin Falls on Tuesday and that he should know more then.

      Blain was not looking forward to making the phone call home, as he could just imagine the shock and gloom that would prevail following the news from yesterday. However, he knew it was what he should do, so he dialed the phone, and his father picked it up.

      “Hi, Dad. Kyle called me with your bad medical news. How are you doing? Better yet, how is Mom?”

      “Thanks for calling, Blain. We are just digesting the diagnosis, and right now, we will have to leave it in the Lord’s hands.”

      “Great, Dad. I feel kind of helpless here in San Diego and with you being 1,500 miles away from here.”

      Terry Duncan, Blain’s father, assured him that he should just carry on, and they would keep him informed as more became known.

      Blain’s dad called him on Tuesday night and said that he would be honest and not try to hide the truth. “They had done a lot of tests last Friday, and now the doctors tell me that it is definitely stage III prostate cancer and that they have assigned it level 8 on the Gleason scale.”

      “What’s that, Dad?”

      “It is one of the measures that they use to more accurately describe how far it has advanced.”

      “Okay, so where does yours measure at?”

      “Not good, and that is all I know right now. I will be starting to take some treatments soon, and they think that a combination of chemotherapy and radiation is the best course.”

      “Wow! I think that means a lot of side effects from the treatments and that you will be out of action and resting a lot,” Blain responded.

      “Probably. The treatments will most likely take place in Salt Lake City at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. I am not sure how much that I will be able to do down at the dealership during the treatments. It is going to make Kyle’s job a lot more intense.”

      The Duncan family owned a long-existing farm equipment sales and СКАЧАТЬ