My name is Delbert Dearman.  I live in Petal, Mississippi with my wife Gale.  We have 3 sons and 6 grandchildren.  In my free time, I enjoy drawing and painting.

On my birthday in 2014, I had a biopsy that confirmed I had prostate cancer.  It turned out to be a Gleason score of 9, which is very aggressive, so I opted to have my prostrate removed.  About a year later, I was diagnosed with bladder cancer and started treatment for that.  I had to have my bladder removed, and because of the radiation treatments for prostate cancer, it was not an easy surgery.  Bottom line, I had complications from the surgery and that did not turn out well.  I am very happy to be a survivor.

I have always used humor to cope with most situations. I believe you can either laugh or cry and I prefer to laugh.  So, as I went through this journey, I attempt to be upbeat and try to keep others as upbeat as I could.  I love to kid around with my doctors and nurses, but make no mistake, cancer is as serious as it gets. I am grateful for all the advances that have been made with cancer research in the last nine years, in a large part due to the American Cancer Society and their efforts.

Well, as I approach my birthday again, I have just had another biopsy and found out I have lung cancer, unrelated to the other cancers.  As I start all the scans and many medical appointments, I like to tell the newly diagnosed patients that there is hope.

How else could I have been bugging the socks off my doctors and nurses and technicians for the last nine years?  So ,when you go for your next scan, just causally mention that dogs can’t operate that equipment, but cats can.  Dogs do the lab work.