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Editor's Note: This is the third story in a multipart series. Read the first and second stories.
A few weeks after Staff Sgt. Chris DeLano met Col. Tom Stewart in a brewery to tell him he had throat cancer, DeLano reached back out with what seemed to be good news: His cancer treatment appeared to be working.
DeLano — the quiet soldier who had worked to help his guys when they were in danger in Afghanistan, as well as when the suicide deaths began after they returned home to Massachusetts after their deployment — seemed to have hope.
“[Doctors have] started me on [an estrogen blocker] to couple with radiation treatments,” DeLano texted Stewart. “The original mass has been shrinking but found another one on my vocal cords. Go back in two weeks to see if that one is shrinking also.”
Stewart shot back with a Bee Gees joke.
“They've [doctors] been optimistic the whole time,” DeLano wrote.
“That's good to hear,” Stewart replied.
“Yes, sir,” DeLano wrote, “it is.”
It was December 2020 — just a few months after DeLano told his superiors at his National Guard unit about his diagnosis.
DeLano closed out the text conversation by saying he was headed to the airport to drop off his…
