Part 1 – Democrat Coroner Candidate and Cancer Survivor Dave Bachmann Bases Campaign on Cancer Awareness

After reading about how McHenry County’s Democratic Party candidate for coroner Dave Bachmann was planning to use cancer awareness as a campaign theme, I asked him for more information. What follows is what he sent me.

(This is as good a place as any to remind candidates that I am happy to run their press releases or other communications to voters.)

It is appropriate for you to know that Bachmann buried both my mother, when she was killed while crossing Route 14 on Woodstock’s Dean Street by a truck speeding from Harvard, and my father, when he died of lung cancer, having not stopped smoking quite soon enough.

Bachmann now lives in Hebron and is running against Republican incumbent Marlene Lantz. In the primary elections he received more votes than she did.

Dear Cal:

As you are aware, I have made the decision to dedicate my 2008 Campaign for the office of McHenry County Coroner to Cancer Awareness.

Although I have never really disclosed all the particulars as to why, I am grateful to all of those who are now contacting me wanting to help, and also thanking me for this dedication. Within a 12 hour period this past Sunday, I had 98 visitors to my blog page from around the country.

Just this morning, Tuesday February 19, I opened my email, and to my surprise, was a very nice email from Courtney Lercara herself. I am deeply touched by this very unexpected response to what I considered, my innocent response to a cause I have myself, been touched by. I am attaching information about Courtney and her California based group. She is an amazing women!

In short, in 2002, on my 42nd Birthday, I felt compelled to go see my doctor. I was not feeling quite right, and was sweating.

My mother always said,

“David, your a hypochondriac!”

Well, that may have been so, but that statement had well served to save my life. I remember going to the emergency room, September 7, 2002 as my doctor and friend, was already there working. I had called him and he told me to come on down to the ER and he would do a CT scan…. I thought innocent enough, non-invasive, sure I would come right down.

I can still vividly recall the look on my doctor and friends face when he came to my Emergency Room Cubicle to tell me the results of the CT Scan. He was ghost white and grim in the face.

I said,

“What’s up doc, you look like you just lost your best friend?”

He said, Dave, your very sick you have a large 4cm tumor in the head of your pancreas, and it does not look good. He said he wanted me to come back the following day for more tests, and to see a specialist.

I went home, a bit taken back.

That day was “My Day”.

I always felt in life, we all have our time when we are faced with our own mortality, it was just a matter of when and where. My day had indeed arrived.

I went to the hospital the following afternoon, and met a very nice doctor who was going to put me on the operating table, put me to sleep, and place a scope down my throat and down into my stomach and pancreas. He did so.

While I was still sleeping and he was completed, he went to the waiting room and instructed my children that I had a bad cancer and that I would be gone within 8-10 months. My tumor had caused a “stricture” of the bile ducts and that is a bad sign.

Upon waking up, the kind doctor gave me the news. He stated it’s bad, that I would die in about 8 months. I reached up and took his hand and held it…

I began to cry, he began to cry, and said he had to go, and gently placed my hand on the bed and walked away.

Part 2 tomorrow.


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