When I recently reported on Chuck Myer, former Dispatch
columnist and Gilroy community leader and activist, he wanted to
let people know how much he appreciates everyone’s good wishes as
he battles malignant melanoma.
When I recently reported on Chuck Myer, former Dispatch columnist and Gilroy community leader and activist, he wanted to let people know how much he appreciates everyone’s good wishes as he battles malignant melanoma.
Chuck and I work as colleagues for the same non-profit organization, and many of the people I write about are people he once wrote about. He began his column-writing career for the Dispatch at $15 per column and wrote about the colorful characters of Gilroy for 10 years.
A collection of his best columns is still being circulated at the local library, and he stays connected to Gilroy in many ways. For instance, he recently participated in the drive to recognize Rucker’s Janice Krahenbuhl as Educator of the Year.
She was honored last Saturday at the Chamber of Commerce dinner, in part because of Chuck adding his voice to the groundswell of support for the past two years.
Now he’s in the fight of his life at age 51. Chuck has always been known for his sense of humor.
While it might seem unlikely that anything about cancer could be funny, once you talk to Chuck, you find that just isn’t true.
He has been writing a series of articles he calls, “Melanoma Melodrama,” for the Connection, a newsletter he edits. In the first installment Chuck e-mailed me, he wrote about how he didn’t want to contact a doctor, due to his early assumption that what he had on his head was merely a bad patch of dandruff:
“When it wouldn’t go away, I thought I must have been victimized by one of those melodramatic maladies you see on commercials on late-night cable television. I thought there might be some kind of ointment on the pharmacy shelf that might help me. I found one for psoriasis, and started reading the small print.
” ‘Warning,’ it said. ‘This product contains chemicals that are known to cause cancer.’ ”
Chuck soon found out that what he had was not going to be cured as easily as a case of dandruff.
“Interesting what the doctor said a few days later, when I came in with a new complaint.
“Now this soft-spoken man is from India, and is named for a Hindu deity, and his office advertises, ‘Urdu spoken here,’ so I didn’t expect this when he felt the bump on the side of my neck:
” ‘JESUS!’ he exclaimed.”
Chuck is a man of faith, and he relies on that to get him through the hardest moments of this unexpected journey.
He tells of the moment his doctor finally reveals his diagnosis. “The doctor walks in and looks me in the eye. The man of few words.
‘You have malignant melanoma. Clark Class IV.’
“I know what melanoma is. And the way he’s enunciating the ‘four’ pretty much tells me that ‘Clark Classes’ don’t go up to XCLVIII or something like that. (They only go up to four).”
Chuck was operated on by a surgeon named Dr. Ow (yes, that really is his name), and then began a painful series of chemotherapy and radiation.
He decided it would be best for him to educate himself as much as possible in order to demystify melanoma.
“I learn that a study in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology found that well-educated white-collar men have the highest risk of developing it. Researchers surmise that a pattern of many months of little skin exposure (a result of working indoors) with occasional overexposure and sunburn (such as that acquired at sunny resort vacations) may be responsible.”
Chuck says, “Right. I represent that remark. Although I don’t remember the fancy resort part.”
