The Best View Comes After the Hardest Climb By Tolli Willhite One might say life is like climbing a mountain. It has twists and turns with high peaks and low valleys. Sometimes we’re steadily climbing one step at a time, enjoying the views and embracing the experience. Other times, we find ourselves on the wrong path, and we need to turn around, regroup and change course. That’s exactly where Luke Dingman, a 54-year-old native of Coeur d’Alene, found himself in 2018. “That’s when everything changed,” said Luke. “That’s where it all began.” However, the beginning of Luke’s story didn’t start there. It began a year prior, when he decided it was time to make a dream a reality. An unexpected detour The Wonderland Trail is a 93-mile hiking trail that circumnavigates Mount Rainier. After a lifetime of hiking, camping and enjoying northern Idaho, Luke was ready for the challenge. He and his brother-in-law, Jerome, spent an entire year training and carefully planning every detail. Luke was getting in shape and feeling good. Even the heartburn that troubled him for years had disappeared. Three months before Luke and Jerome were due to set off on their long-awaited adventure, he had trouble swallowing a piece of his award-winning barbecue brisket. “Luke, being the stubborn human he is, didn’t think he needed to be seen,” recalled his wife, Emily. “He chalked it up to not chewing well enough.” The swallowing issues worsened, and Luke was rapidly dropping weight. He finally gave in to his wife’s pleas and went to Kootenai Health for an endoscopy. Twelve days before he was due to leave for his trip, Cory Richardson, M.D., a general surgeon with Kootenai Health Trauma Services, delivered the results. Luke had advanced esophageal cancer. Luke tearfully recalled that moment and said, “I’ll never forget—Dr. Richardson looked me in the eye and told me, ‘We can get this.’ I was too dazed in that moment to grasp what he was telling me.” Luke was promptly referred to Nathanael Gay, M.D., a medical oncologist at Kootenai Clinic Cancer Services in Post Falls, and treatments began immediately. He underwent a grueling six weeks of chemotherapy and 28 radiation treatments. “The cancer center is full of people who aren’t in a good place, but the staff make an uncomfortable situation as comfortable as it could be,” Luke fondly recalls. “As weird as it sounds, they make it fun. They’re singing and bantering back and forth, and I’m now friends with them all on Facebook. They’re family now. I genuinely love these people.” Following chemotherapy and radiation, an esophagectomy and gastric pull-up procedure was performed by Dr. Richardson and Robert Burnett, M.D., of Kootenai Clinic Cardiothoracic Surgery. Luke spent A patient's journey through cancer Robert Burnett, M.D. Cory Richardson, M.D. Nathanael Gay, M.D. 16
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