Dr. Judith K. Werner met Mark Clifton in 1998 when he started dating her daughter, Nancy. The next year, he discovered a lump in his testicle, which was quickly determined to be cancerous. He underwent surgery and chemotherapy and appeared to be fine.
Mark and his loved ones couldn't have known this event, traumatic in itself, was only the start of a long series of life-threatening medical problems.
Mark and Nancy married. They had a scare in 2001 when a mass developed in Mark's chest, but after extensive surgery removed the growing tissue, it was diagnosed as benign.
The couple had two children-a son and daughter. Mark's career went well, and two dogs joined the family. Mark experienced a second form of cancer, more chemo, and a brief, shining moment of peace and health. Then another cancerous mass cost the young man a lung and led to further severe health complications, culminating in a massive stroke at age forty-one.
This is Mark's astonishing story, chronicling the efforts of eleven different physicians, Mark's family, and Mark himself to beat the odds. It's about psychological and emotional hardship, pain, and suffering. But ultimately, it's about Mark and his incredible resilience.
About the Author: Now retired, Dr. Judith K. Werner was a high school and college English instructor before changing careers to become a board-certified family physician.
After a decade spent teaching, Werner enrolled at the University of North Texas Medical School, graduating with a doctor of osteopathy degree in 1986. She then worked as an intern at Fort Worth Osteopathic Hospital and completed a family-practice residency at Methodist Hospital Systems of Dallas, Texas.
Werner practiced medicine for twenty-four years and was elected the first female president of medical staff at Methodist Health Systems of Dallas in 2000.
A mother of three and grandmother of five, Werner lives in Cedar Hill, Texas. She is training her Great Pyrenees, Teddy, to be a therapy animal and looks forward to walking hospital corridors with a white dog instead of in a white coat.
