ON Wednesday, Tommy Trask -- the once indefatigable head of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union -- lay in his bed on the second floor of the Rehabilitation Hospital in Nuuanu, admiring his view of the parking lot. Tommy Trask’s battle
with lung cancerEarlier that morning he had been transported by ambulance from Straub Hospital, where he had undergone surgery for cancer in September. "I haven't seen the sky in a long time," the 68-year-old patient told his wife, Jo Anne.
The labor leader, robust and respected in his prime, is now frail. Although his eyes are bright through bifocals, Tommy's voice cracks from weariness. As he runs his fingers through a sparse head of white hair, thinned from chemotherapy, he smiles wanly.
Trask looks like a man who has been through hell and lived to tell about it. His trip to hell began on Aug. 27 of this year.
Tommy was packing for an ILWU golf tournament on Kauai when he felt a pain on the left side of his body. Maybe he had pulled a muscle, he thought.
Jo Anne, an anesthesia technician at Straub, made an appointment for him at the hospital's Mililani clinic. But when the X-rays were read, it was the big "C." Tommy went home and cried. It was up to Jo Anne to be strong and clear-thinking for the both of them.
An MRI found that the main tumor was in Tommy's spine. It would have to be removed immediately. As he recovered from the painful back surgery in Straub, his legs paralyzed, smaller tumors popped out like bumps on his abdomen and chest. They were sore to the touch.
Worst of all, Tommy's right lung was filled with the advanced-stage cancer and was inoperable. Jo Anne blames two packs of Salem 100s every day for the past 50 years, and long hours in smoke-filled rooms during intense negotiations, for the toll on Tommy. Without any treatment, he would die in three months.
Beside radiation, Dr. Reuben Guerrero wanted Tommy to undergo chemotherapy. Initially, the patient balked. He had heard so many "bad" stories about it. "Have you heard the good stories?" the oncologist asked him. "Everyone walking around who once had cancer is a good story." Trask agreed to try it.
The megadosage of radiation and chemotherapy "wiped him out." Jo Anne asked if the massive doses could be cut back into three smaller portions. Tommy felt better after that.
The bumps are gone from his body now that the tumors are shrinking, and he is pain-free. Tommy has been cheered by his many visitors, who bring flowers and encouraging words.
For the next three weeks, he will attend two physical therapy sessions and two occupational therapy classes daily. "I have to go in with the feeling that I will walk again," says Tommy. "I will take it as far as I can. If I have to use a wheelchair, so be it. If I have to walk with braces, that's OK. I'm not going to give up until the Lord says it's my time to go."
Jo Anne Trask looks at her husband, but her smile is a sad one. Although Tommy won't acknowledge it, his prognosis is not good.
THE doctors give him a year to live. He may never walk again. And the continuing treatments (he will have chemotherapy again in three weeks at Straub) are only keeping the cancer from spreading. "He is still in denial," Jo Anne says. Sometimes that's the best place to be, especially when the odds don't look good.
If there is room in your prayers tonight, say one for Tommy Trask, the champion of Hawaii's working people. He is going to need it.