It was Christmas Eve 2024, but Eddie Salas had given up on sleeping hours ago. Instead, he stared at his bedroom ceiling, wondering how many more Christmas mornings he’d share with his family.
He’d received a Large B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma diagnosis that afternoon. The doctors had found eight different spots on his bones. It was fast-growing. Aggressive. Stage IV.
But Eddie’s own life wasn’t flashing before his eyes; it was his older brother's.
Juan’s birthday was tomorrow. This would be the 15th year he wasn’t there to celebrate it as he passed away on June 7, 2010 at 37 years old. He’d been diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer. He was not a smoker or drinker. Doctors said it had been slow-growing for years. It could’ve been due to the high-hazard industry he worked in, maybe exposure to asbestos and mold. Or it could’ve been growing since birth. One of the cruelest parts of cancer, as Eddie had just found out, is how random the disease is. Sometimes, the best people get dealt the worst hand.
Eddie had a severe case of little brother syndrome. He wanted to do everything Juan did, but better. In fact, Eddie owed his career as the head football coach at San Antonio Harlan to Juan for introducing him to the game.
Juan underwent treatment at MD Anderson in Houston. But when the cancer became incurable, he moved back to Schertz to spend the rest of his life with family. Eddie was coaching at Boerne at the time. Every Monday after afternoon practice, Eddie would drive to Houston to get Juan’s medicine, arrive at the hospital at 9:00 p.m., and then drive back to the San Antonio area.
Juan fought every day until his last. But Eddie’s final memories are of his hero wounded, slumped over in pain on the couch. He associated those images with cancer, a disease that takes and takes. It took his brother’s health, then his life. It took all of his parents’ time as they cared for him, then their child.
Cancer affects a wide net of people around the person who contracts it. Eddie now feared it had ensnare his wife, Abbey and children Mia (20 years old), Ethan (13) and Ava (6).
He could feel his wife’s eyes on him, lying beside him in bed.
“I can’t raise the kids without you, you know,” she said.
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