A Farewell To The Love Of My Life

Bob Manville fighting the good fight!

This is hard to do!  Since last September Bob has been fighting a new bout of Cancer.  This time it had metastasized from one of his former 6 cancers to his liver as well as to some other odd places.  The doctors did not know where it came from but recommended he do a round of Chemotherapy and see where to go from there.

Chemotherapy at Steamboat Springs.

  Even though Bob had kind of felt he never wanted to do chemo, he was fighter enough to give it a shot. We were still in North Park so the chemo was done in Steamboat Springs an hour away over Rabbit Ears Pass.  The chemo was as advertised.  He was quite sick after each treatment (1 each week for 3 weeks then 2 weeks off for 3 rounds) and was just recovering as the next round started.  By the time the last round was done we were snowed out of the cabin and staying in Casper with Carla and Jim.  We would drive from there to Walden and stay with our nephew Hughie and drive back and forth to Steamboat.  One time we had to stay in Steamboat because it was snowing so hard!

Lots of snow to contend with.  This was outside the motel window!

  Another time the drive from Casper to Rawlins was so bad I couldn't see the front of the car for miles!  Poor Bob was miserable traveling those miles for chemo but he toughed it out.  The chemo was finished just before Christmas and the family celebrated Christmas at the cabin.  Shortly after we drove over to Steamboat to have a CAT scan and were told the chemo did not work.  Bob decided no more and we headed up to Carla's for the winter.

Bob and I at the Blue Shoe 5K race.  I came in 3rd in my class!

The residual effects of the chemo lasted for quite some time--especially the lack of appetite and weird taste of all foods never left.  By the end of January we had made a trip to the emergency room and spent several nights trying to relieve pain and anxiety.  We finally found a Doctor that recommended using outpatient hospice.  What a blessing that was!  I can not recommend hospice as a choice highly enough.  The nurses and support staff were wonderful and have become close friends with all of our family.  They are comforting, and supportive and tell it like it is, which we appreciated even though it was hard to take.  The first few months went by with Bob feeling about the same.

At the gardens in Bellagio with our great grand daughters.

 We took a trip to Las Vegas to have one last shot at the casinos and to be with our grandson, Micah's, family and our daughter JJ and husband Ozzie.  Carla and Jim went with us.  Bob was able to do a little gambling and the little girls took him for a walk in the wheelchair through the gardens at Bellagio.

Bob's birthday cake.  He was 78 years old on April 26.

Erin and JJ with Bob.

The flights were pretty hard on Bob.  Allegiant Air is not known for comfort--the seats don't even lean back a little! But he recovered nicely and we felt hope that a miracle might again take place for him.  As the weeks went by he did start to decline and finally we accepted that this was the end of the line for our fighter cowboy! On May 19, 2014 he slipped away to be with his Maker! We are deeply sad but know that he is at peace now.

Bob survived cancer for over 35 years and lived a good long life!

I will post his obituary and some of the eulogies his grandchildren and sons-in-law gave at the memorial service as well as the slide show Carla made for it, on my next blog posts.