1/11/98

Keeping time with friends--Prostate cancer may be killing Chuck Snook, but he's not alone

A month ago Chuck Snook was ready to die, just roll over, go to sleep and not wake up.

He was tired all the time, exhausted, he said, to the point he could fall asleep in mid-sentence; and he was in pain, too, from the cancer that had spread throughout his body and is slowly, inevitably, killing him.

Chuck was ready, not anxious, but ready.

He seemed, at times, to just not concentrate, and whatever he did took all his energy.

"That's the wildest thing about this now," he said at the time. "Every little thing is just a tiring exercise. ...I can no longer sit at the computer--just too tiring."

The former principal of Flanagan High School had been keeping a written journal of his experiences since the autumn of 1994, when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and told he probably had three years to live.

By early December, three years and a month later, he was thinking the doctor had it right.

He couldn't read, let alone write, and sometimes he couldn't even concentrate. "I've lost time," he said, "just really lost time...disoriented. ...Sometimes when I'm talking to somebody, I just feel I'm babbling."

One morning he was lying in bed, talking with Cheryl Weber, a social worker from OSF St. James hospice program of Pontiac, and his friend, Ray Zimmerman, dropped by for a visit.

"He no more than gets here," Chuck said, "and I start to feel funny." The "funny" feeling quickly developed into intense pain in his abdomen and pelvic area, waves of pain. He catheter had become blocked.

Betty Rainey, his man hospice nurse, came out and replaced it, and she gave Chuck morphine to ease his pain. The drug worked, until that night. Then the pain returned, hard.

Eve, Chuck's wife, called the hospice. Another nurse, Carol Schopp, and the chaplain, the Rev. Gretchen Stinebaugh, came out. "They thought I was at that point," said Chuck, "and so did I, really. It was like it was OK."

"You are so exhausted and tired," he said of himself, "and you're in some pain, that you're just to the point where if this is the time, then this is the time, and let's be done with it.

"Gretch prayed for me," said Chuck, "which I appreciated."

In retrospect he said he thinks he is "well into the red area...and it's probably now just a question of time. ...Hopefully, I'm still coherent. You just work through this, that's all I can say,...with the help of the people around you."

The next morning Chuck had another bout of bad pain, which he got over, and then it seemed as if during a period of several days he recuperated.

"It's been bad," he said, even before he was through it all, "but at the same time it isn't something that the average person couldn't get through one way or another."

Especially with the encouragement of friends and relatives.

His old boss, Bill Braksick, came out and spent a day with him. The hospice team moved a hospital bed into his den at home, and now he spends most of his time in it.

On a table next to it, and within Chuck's easy reach, are a glass of pink lemonade, his medications, a family photograph, the television remote control, a small clock, a calendar, his eye glasses, a handkerchief, a telephone, a book, and now a Bible.

Chuck said he hadn't read the Bible since college, and now he's picking it up again.

On the wall behind the table is a clock that always reads 7:48. It's correct twice a day, but it doesn't matter to Chuck. The time of day and day of week have little meaning for him.

What does matter now are the people around him--the friends he has who visit, and even those who can't. At least he knows they are thinking of him, and he is thinking of them, and for those friendships he is grateful.

"I've been absolutely blessed with company," he said. His daughter, Annemarie Allen, came from Iowa in mid-December and stayed through the new year.

She said the telephone would start to ring about 7:30 in the morning with friends calling just to say hello to Chuck and then to chat a spell.

A hospice aide, usually Rose Keith, comes out daily and gives him a bath or changes his bed linens, whatever he needs done.

When the schools let out for winter vacation, Chuck, a former teacher and principal, began to get a constant stream of visitors. Sometimes the driveway and yard outside the Snooks' rural Flanagan home looked like a used car lot.

The high school girls' basketball team came out for a visit. A group of teachers from Prophetstown, where Chuck worked long ago, drove over for an afternoon before Christmas.

"Eve and I have really been blessed through the years," he said. "Wherever we've been, we've always had close friends."

Chuck's whole family was there for the holiday, and by then his condition seemed to have reached a plateau. His spirits rose, some strength returned, he seemed alert again.

He gave Eve a Waterford crystal vase for Christmas. She gave him a new VCR. He thinks he may even learn how to use this one, he said. But, "it wasn't the gifts that made Christmas what is was. It was having everybody here, and we just had a good time. We had a lot of fun. We had a lot of laughs."

By New Year's Eve most of the family had returned to their homes. Annemarie stayed on, though, and that afternoon Chuck's catheter blocked up again, so they called the hospice. Betty and "Rev. Gretch," as Chuck calls the chaplain, came out.

Betty changed the catheter, and Chuck said they left him alone for a few minutes. Then pretty soon they all came marching into his room with noisemakers, streamers, confetti, and even a small glass of wine. It was a farewell to 1997 and a welcome to 1998, another year and, Chuck was sure, his last.

But, as he has said all along, he is ready for whatever his illness may bring.

Earl Ferguson came out from town last Monday and gave Chuck a haircut. It was his first in a long time and he felt pretty good about it. He'd been "Fergusized," he said. That's what Earl's customers call his haircuts.

A couple of days later, he had a visit from his congressman. U.S. Rep. Tom Ewing came out from Pontiac. Chuck said he didn't know why and he didn't care. He's glad to have the company and he's glad to talk to anybody about the good work of the hospice, how as a hospice patient he is as comfortable as possible and how he will be able to die on his own terms, pain free, at home probably, with his friends, with his family.

For the present, Chuck's condition is pretty good, as he says. He's alert, his pain is under control, he has some energy, he can even sit on the edge of his bed, usually without help.

Betty, the nurse, explained it to him: His health will continue to deteriorate as the cancer grows and steals his nourishment. But his reaction to it will come in spurts. He'll drop down, he said, and then he'll level out.

Right now he's leveled out, and he's enjoying it.

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