By JAMES BROWN
Glasgow News 1
Daryl Murphy was always prepared as a coach and school administrator, but he was not ready for a December afternoon phone call in 2023.
“I had been battling a cough,” Daryl said, but the cough wasn’t responding to medication. “I had never been sick, man. So, my wife said, ‘You’re not getting any better.’”
Michelle, his wife, insisted he see his family doctor, Ashley Norris. She treated him for pneumonia, “and it just wasn’t getting any better. It wasn’t like I was ill, it was just this nagging cough.”
He had a couple of X-rays and then Dr. Norris said she wanted him to have a bronchoscopy. She saw something on the X-ray in his left lung that wasn’t reacting to the treatment for pneumonia.
Daryl and Michelle did some research on the bronchoscopy and what that was designed to reveal.
“We figured it was an infection, maybe, or a bad case of pneumonia,” Daryl said.
He had never been sedated — which was required for the scope — and he was a little nervous about that, but “I was still in the whole, it’s all good stage.” That first bronchoscopy was the easiest on Daryl emotionally because a few days later everything would change.
Daryl gets the news
“Dec 14, 2023, 4:05 in the afternoon, I had just gotten home from school,” Daryl said that was when he got a call from Dr. Omar Mahmoud with the results of the bronchoscopy.
“The first words out of his mouth is, ‘Mr. Murphy I’ve got some news on the test results,’ he said, ‘Is your wife home?’
“And I thought that was kind of odd.”
“I said she will be here and we can go ahead, and he said, ‘Well, you have cancer.’”
The first thing Daryl did was call Michelle, who was about to go have dinner with some co-workers.
“Can you come on home?” he asked her. “I need to talk to you about something. She obviously knew something was going on.”
“My whole thought from the time I hung up with the doctor until the time she came in was, ‘I have cancer, and I’m going to die.’”
That time was about 30 minutes.
In reflection, Daryl said, he understood why the doctor did not want him to be alone by himself, “because he was getting ready to give me some news that all cancer patients dread getting.”
Daryl learns about his cancer
“I was wrought with emotion,” Daryl said. “We both were, obviously, but [Michelle] said we are going to get through this. We are going to beat this.”
The doctor had told Daryl to come in the next day and they would begin to develop a plan for fighting the cancer.
The Murphys have two children, Corbin and Katie. Their son was at Campbellsville University, while their daughter — who also played softball for her father — was in her senior year at Barren County recovering from knee surgery.
“We told them a couple days later. I said I can’t even think straight here, lets just wait until we’ve talked to [the doctor] before we tell the kids,” Daryl said. “We took that time as a family to be emotional and then get to the point where we say, ‘Ok, what’s the next step?’”
Daryl confided in Amy Irwin, who was then the principal at Barren County High School. She had battled cancer and gave him the name of her oncologist. That was the beginning of trying to find where he would have his cancer treated.
“I just can’t imagine how people begin these journeys because I look back on ours and we were just like teenage kids trying to find our first job … we didn’t know what to do,” Daryl said.
He and Michelle visited Dr. Julie Means at Tennessee Oncology and she discussed a treatment plan, but first Daryl had to have another bronchoscopy.
“I had a lung cancer in my left lung, a non-small cell carcinoma” with an EGFR mutation, Daryl explained.
The EGFR refers to the epidermal growth factor receptor, which is a protein located on the surface of the cells that helps them grow. A mutation in the gene that codes the EGFR protein can make cells grow too much, which can cause cancer, according to the American Lung Association.
Smokers and people who work where certain types of chemicals might be inhaled make up about 90 percent of those who get lung cancer.
“There are about 10 percent of us who get it for no particular reason,” Daryl said. He said he never smoked and did not work in an area where he would be exposed to the cancer-causing chemicals.
Dr. Means specialty was breast cancer, so she recommended Daryl to lung specialist Dr. Melissa Johnson at Sarah Cannon Research Institute in Nashville.
Daryl and Michelle arranged to meet with Dr. Johnson, “and, again, every time I do something with a different physician, I have to have another bronchoscope.”
“Every time I did this, my greatest fear was that they were going to find something more,” he said.
“Through this whole process I was getting sicker. I was coughing a lot more, I started coughing up blood,” Daryl said. “I coughed so hard one night I broke two ribs.”
All of this is happening before the end of the year. Daryl said each increase in his illness confirmed what he thought the day Dr. Mahmoud called him. “OK, I was right. I’m going to die.”
Daryl has his worst day
Before they could start the treatment, they needed to stop the bleeding in Daryl’s lung. Dr. Johnson said a vascular surgeon would go through the main artery in his leg and cauterize the spot that was bleeding in his lung. They would also do the bronchoscopy to get the samples Dr. Johnson needed.
Through all of this, Michelle is keeping him sane. “There is no way I could have navigated any of this without her. She was the calming of all the things that I would bring up that would be negative.”
On the day of the lung bleeder cauterization and bronchoscopy, everything went as normal until Daryl was in the recovery room. He noticed he couldn’t feel his foot.
When the nurse returned to see Daryl, he told him there was a tingling in his foot, but that had gone away and now it was numb. Over the next few minutes, the numbness moved up his leg and Daryl knew there was a problem.
“What seemed like two hours was probably two minutes,” he said.
As this is happening, Michelle is in the recovery waiting area.
The vascular surgeon returned with other medical personnel and they said, “We’ve got to go.”
“Got to go? Go where?” Daryl asked.
“We’ve got to go back into surgery, we think you are having a blood clot,” the doctor responded.
“I said we aren’t going anywhere until I see my wife. You better find her,” Daryl said. The nurse said they would.
Daryl was hustled out of the recovery area and into the hallway back toward surgery.
“We’re out in the hallway and I said, ‘Listen folks, I’m not doing this until I have seen my wife … I want to see my wife before I go back into this operating room,” Daryl said.
The person who had done the bronchoscopy was with Michelle and “we all met there in the hallway, and we prayed a little bit in the hallway, and [Michelle] gave me a kiss on the forehead,” Daryl said, emotionally. “I said I’ll be right back.”
In the operating room, Daryl said he told the nurse he was going to close his eyes and trust that “you folks are going to take me home here. I felt better that I had seen my wife and that we had prayed about this situation, and just in that moment I felt good about it.”
Daryl returns to living
Once Daryl could see the path forward in the fight against cancer, he began to think he might live.
His doctor recommended a chemotherapy and immunotherapy plan. He said he didn’t know much about the medicine, but he would have to trust Dr. Johnson’s judgement.
“I told her I got some things I want to see. I want to see my daughter graduate from high school, and I want to see my son graduate from college. I’d love to see my first grandchild,” Daryl said. “I said I’m not putting you on the spot, here, but if there is an option you feel like would give me an opportunity to do that, then that’s what I want to do.”
“She said this is the one we need to go with,” he said.
Daryl’s treatment plan began immediately after the first of the new year. Usually, he would be deep in preparing for the start of a softball season, but he still wasn’t certain he would coach in 2024.
“Probably after my first chemo treatment when I had those five days when I was sick and didn’t want to get out of bed, I said, I’ve got to have a reason here … and I think I want to get busy moving forward and not keep replaying that phone call in my head,” Daryl said.
The cancer treatments became part of his routine, something he could work into his life like a practice plan or preparing for his team’s next opponent.
“I decided in the middle of January I was ready to continue on with my day job [as a principal] and my afternoon job as a softball coach,” Daryl said.
Some days and weeks were more challenging than others, but along the way his wife and family lifted him, and he knew he was going to live.
*Daryl Murphy is the keynote speaker for the annual Care Power Hour, which is July 25 at 11:30 a.m. at the T.J. Health Pavilion Community Center. See more information about the purpose of the event below.*
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CARE Power Hour is an event to celebrate cancer survivors, their families, caregivers, providers, and friends. The lavender ribbon is a general symbol of awareness for all cancers. It serves as a unifying symbol, promoting empathy and support for anyone affected by cancer regardless of the specific type. Proceeds from CARE Power Hour directly benefit Community Medical Care’s Breaking Barriers to Care Program, which provides assistance to cancer patients for the most common barriers to care such as transportation and supplemental nutrition. Purchase tickets to the event here.
