He said I was in my early forties,
With a lot of life before me
And one moment came that stopped me on a dime
I spent most of the next days,
Looking at the x-rays
Talking ‘bout the options and talkin’ ‘bout sweet time...
- lyrics from country singer Tim McGraw’s song “Live Like You’ Were Dying”
By TAMMY JOYNER
tjoyner@ajc.com
Two Christmases ago, Terry Downs lay on an operating table, a deadly, tangerine-size tumor lodged on the left side of his brain. The kind of tumor that literally leaves you speechless and, at best, with 18 months to live.
Even if the 44-year-old McDonough father of four made it through surgery, he faced the prospect of living the rest of his life as a child in a man’s body.
It was up to neurosurgeon Dr. Sandea Greene-Harris to make sure that didn’t happen.
She’d seen her share of stop-on-a-dime moments. As an Army reservist, she’d spent time in Iraq operating on brain-injured soldiers hurt by roadside IEDs. She knew that Terry Downs' case was every bit as grave.
* * *
It was the kind of ghastly, out-of-the-blue gut punch that can happen to anyone, any day. And, like anyone would, Terry and his wife, Lee Ann, had tried their best to believe it wasn't happening.
Terry had been mixing up the girls’ names, messing up the TV remote and forgetting passwords at work. Lee Ann figured it was due to the heavier work load he’d inherited after the company layoffs. But the headaches and excessive sleepiness could no longer be ignored.
So, while most people were out shopping for last-minute gifts, Terry and Lee Ann were in their doctor’s office late on Christmas Eve. Lee Ann’s hunch was confirmed by the large tumor on the X-ray, which set off a series of what, in retrospect, the couple feels were life-saving decisions.
“They could have said, ‘We’ll wait til after the holidays,’ ” Lee Ann said.
Instead, the couple was sent immediately to Southern Regional Medical Center in Riverdale, where Dr. Greene-Harris, a 39-year-old married mother of two, was on-call. She’d hoped for an uneventful holiday.
But she knew the instant she saw the MRI, it was going to be a rough holiday, not so much for her but for this young family. The MRI showed a grade 4 Glioblastoma Multiforme, the type of incurable tumor that Sen. Ted Kennedy was battling and that had killed singer Tim McGraw’s dad, Tug.
Dr. Greene-Harris admitted Downs and ordered super-strong steroids to relieve the swelling in his brain, intending to operate the day after Christmas.
But Terry deteriorated rapidly. Lee Ann was taking the girls home early Christmas afternoon when she got a call summoning her back to the hospital. He was headed into surgery.
She arrived in time to sign a consent form and touch Terry’s hand before he was wheeled into the OR. Dr. Greene-Harris spoke with her briefly. Both were mothers about the same age with young children. The neurosurgeon remembers thinking how strong Lee Ann Downs was, standing stoically by her husband’s side and possibly facing the rest of her life without him.
“I don’t think I ever saw her cry,” Greene-Harris recalls. She remembers, too, “ just how much he leaned on her and how much he allowed her to take the lead when he was in such a weakened and compromised state.”
“They were a Christmas gift to me,” Dr. Greene-Harris said. “To have gone through what they went through in such a short period of time, they demonstrated strength and how strong a bond of marriage can be.”
...He said I was finally the husband that most the time I wasn't
And became a friend, a friend would like to have…
They met at a local country bar. He saw her line-dancing and asked her to dance. But he was recently divorced, and after that one dance, he got cold feet. His hasty exit left Lee Ann, a fun-loving woman from a small Ohio coal-mining town, bewildered.
He came back the next week, though, and two years later on Sept. 21, 1996, the rugged Georgian with the country star good looks married the coal miner's daughter.
It was an altered man who left the hospital on New Year’s Day, 2009 a man who had to be reintroduced to simple words.
“I remember the therapist putting pictures on the wall of items like a bird, a clock, desk or chair,” Downs said. “I was struggling. In my mind, I knew what it was but couldn’t say it.”
Downs went back to work at Deutz Corp., a diesel engine maker in Norcross. After a few months, though, he decided to take medical retirement from the company he’d worked at for 25 years.
The pair now spend time indulging in one of their favorite pastimes: going out to eat. They also spend time walking their dog, Chief, around the lake near their home. Downs recently attended his daughter's school Christmas party, something he was never able to do in the past.
“Right now, I’m feeling good. I’m loving life," he said.
“The biggest thing is how close it’s brought me to my wife. It was never a bad relationship. But since that time I appreciate how hard she works.”
Even the trek to Duke University with Lee Ann for medical tests and monitoring every eight weeks feels like "quality time together."
Lee Ann, too, savors their new bond. "You stop assuming you have tomorrow," she said. "We look at today."
I went skydiving
I went Rocky Mountain climbing
I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu
And I loved deeper
And I spoke sweeter...
He keeps Tim McGraw’s song on his computer.
“It feels like he wrote it for us,” Terry Downs, now 46, said shortly before the family headed off on a pre-Christmas Day road trip to Pigeon Forge, Tenn. The yellow Suzuki motorcycle and the golf cart in the garage are his way of adhering to McGraw’s words to “live like you were dying.”
There is little trace of active cancer now. A large hook-shaped scar on the left side of his head, neatly camouflaged by thick salt and pepper hair, is the only visible reminder of that day two Christmases ago. Terry and Lee Ann Downs drop by to see Dr. Greene-Harris and take pictures at least once a year.
“It’s really a miracle that he’s still here,” Greene-Harris said. His against-the-odds survival has helped her help others facing the same situation.
“I’m honestly able to say, ‘Although this is the prognosis, there are people who prove medicine wrong,’ and Terry Downs is one of them."
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