Senior Master Sgt. Lee Henry says he prays a lot these days and stays close to his wife—bringing her every drill weekend from Washington State, across a continent, to Westover Air Reserve Base in Massachusetts.
The 439th Airlift Wing’s 58th Aerial Port Squadron has been Henry’s home since 2014, when he left the Inactive Ready Reserve and returned to the active reserve after his first bout with a life-threatening disease.
“The first time I went through cancer, I leaned heavily on my faith,” Henry said. The cancer has returned, and on March 9, 2016, he was just days away from deciding between chemotherapy and alternative medicine.
“Eventually it’s going to become clear to us in the next 24 to 48 hours, and if we pick the wrong choice, it could escalate the cancer and it could kill me,” he said three days after a drill weekend, while traveling on the other side of the country with his wife Stacey Henry.
The high school sweethearts, of sorts, weren’t traveling on vacation: They were seeking a second-medical opinion. “A lot of traditional medicine is just a bunch of testing with no real fix in sight—and that’s what scares us,” they said.
RESILIENCY
“My faith is very important to me, and I pray all the time that we make the right decisions,” Henry said during a phone interview from an airport. He flew from his home in Washington to see world-renowned alternative medicine doctors in Nevada, and that was just days after flying from Westover for a drill weekend. “A lot of the traditional medicine doctors told us that no alternatives will work.”
Henry and his wife Stacey went to the same high school, but they reconnected after many years, and after separate marriages, on Facebook. Although they debate over who “liked” whose profile first, they’ve been inseparable ever since.
As always, he said she was right by his side waiting for the flight back to Spokane. They’ve traveled the many miles together for Air Force work and to seek medical advice since his cancer returned in 2016. Now, Henry says, when he is so near to fulfilling his Airman goal of making chief in May, he finds himself in the fight of his life.
A few days earlier, during the March drill weekend, SMSgt. Henry stood an imposing, broad-shouldered figure, at least six feet; he said he’ll wear his military battle dress for as long as he can. “I visited the base clinic, and I’ll be back to drill as long as they clear me.”
For Henry, and the more than 160 aerial port Airmen he mentors, the military is like family, and second to only his blood family.
In between drill weekends and medical visits are the quiet hours. The all-important time he gets to spend with his wife and kids—four grown children, two from marriage—and two granddaughters. He says lengthening and enriching that time requires a regiment of chemotherapy, among other acts of resilience, all in defiance of the cancer wracking his body. It started in his lungs and then spread to the rest of his body. He is not a smoker. He became aware of it after a routine colonoscopy earlier this year.
The fight, he says, comes from the simple act of not giving up—no matter how big the challenge or the task. “The only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time,” he said, recalling the tender question he asked a doctor when he first came face to face with his elephant. “I needed a sense of time. The doctor said four to six months. I’m like ‘how do you come up with a number like that?’ I asked what happens if I fight? He said eight to 10 months.”
Traditional medicine dictated that he start a regiment of chemotherapy right away.
But that was not an option for Henry—not without a second opinion. “You’re going to make me sick for eight to 10 months with chemo? Where’s the quality of life versus the quantity of life?”
Questions. Life, he said, became a series of questions, such as how would he plan now for the eventuality of not being here for his loved ones?
FAMILY
Henry became expert at researching the resources available for his treatment, and ultimately to support his family when he is gone. He said, perhaps, one of the best kept secrets he learned is that service members diagnosed with a terminal disease are eligible to take out half of their Servicemember’s Group Life Insurance policy. He said the rule on usage was not limited to medical treatment, either. “It can be used for anything,” Henry said.
“I have the opportunity to plan ahead for my family’s care, to seek out the resources and to ensure that all of my paperwork is in order,” Henry said, foot stomping the importance of what he had just explained to all Airmen. “Someone who dies in an accident doesn’t have the opportunity to ensure that the right name is on the life insurance policy, that it’s updated, or even that there is .”
Whichever treatment they choose, it starts in March. Harnessing in and gaining strength from family would be easier should Henry take the traditional route and stay back in Washington State. There, the doctors recommended chemotherapy.
Nevada would be a bit more difficult to see family; the course of treatment would be a blend of chemo and alternative approaches not widely used by mainstream medicine. “We know people who have gone to this clinic and were successful,” he said.
“They take treatments from around the world that have been successful in integrating those treatments with a traditional medicine approach,” Stacey added. “So, it’s all about making your body healthy and putting your body in a position to win the fight.”
The difference between the traditional and alterative doctors is the former focuses on a large regiment of chemotherapy—to poison the cancer—and in so doing poison the patient; the latter uses a much lower dosage of chemotherapy, coupled with alternative medicines that boost the immune system.
Henry described the aftereffect of chemotherapy as feeling raw, dry, turned inside out, and with your stomach in knots. “Chemotherapy destroys the immune system,” he said.
Stacey described her husband as loving, and a fighter; she said they were prepared for the rough patches ahead. “He is the type of person who always puts others before himself—and that’s why I fell in love with him,” she said, adding that the road before them on her husband’s journey to get better had a fork in it: One path was paved with traditional medicine, and the other—alternative medicine.
“We’re meeting with one more oncologists in Spokane today,” Stacey said on March 9, while seated in an airport terminal for the fourth time in a week. Her fatigue from the medical appointments—in one day and located 800 miles apart—was in her voice. “After that, we’ll make the decision of whether we go the traditional route or we go the alternative route… We’re trying to figure out what to do… There’s really no wrong answer.”
FAITH
Stacey said she and her husband would next return to Westover in May, skipping the April UTA for his medical treatments. They’re leaning heavily on the side of taking the alternative approach, Henry added.
“All of traditional medicine says this won’t work,” he paused, then chuckled. “I scratch my head and ask ‘Why wouldn’t it work?’”
Henry is familiar with staring death in the face as part of his job—and still going to work. He spent 13 years as a state trooper in Washington. He’s always been willing to serve—anywhere he is needed. He worked for more than two years as a civilian contractor in Afghanistan.
What’s kept him alive, and what even now fills him with a sense of purpose that’s bigger than the limitations of his body?
“We’ve always relied heavily on our faith,” said Henry, who identifies himself as a Christian.
BENEFITS
To learn about Accelerated Benefits through the Veterans’ Administration, which includes rights under SGLI and VGLI policy terms, among others, http://www.benefits.va.gov/INSURANCE/abo.asp
3 LAST THINGS FROM Henry
Preparation: “The fit to fight could be what saved my life. Preparing at 50 and having breathing issues is what prompted me to say ‘That’s not right.’ So, I checked with my doctor. You have to stay on top of your fitness. Staying in shape has helped me survive.”
Suicide Prevention: “There are estimates out there that we’re losing 23 members a day to suicide, and it would be so easy for me to go and say ‘Why am I here?’ But I have more of a purpose than ever—and that goes for everyone. If you have trouble finding your purpose, seek help because there is a lot of support out here for everyone—you just have to seek it.”
Dedication to Goals: “My professional goal is to make chief. My personal goal is to stay true to myself, my family, and my faith. Without those three things—there is no you.”