Miracle cure from cancer turns into Holton’s blessing
Published: June 22, 2005
Those solemn folks over at Brucker & Kishler Funeral Home in nearby Newark haven’t had a reason to pull up and review the Terry Holton account for nearly a year now. It remains unfinished business.
And the staff out at nearby Rocky Fork Cemetery have an order for “six feet under” on hold. They’ve been killing time retelling the story of how last month one of their representatives thought he saw a ghost.
Meanwhile, Holton’s doctors are still shaking their heads. The word “miracle” rarely is used in their business, but these days, whenever he’s in their office, they throw it around as frequently as “open wide and say ahh.”
Holton, 63, who has been training and driving harness horses in Ohio for nearly 50 years, is beating pancreatic cancer. He was diagnosed with the deadly disease after he began feeling sick last summer.
“It was bad,” said Dr. Jim Soldano, Holton’s physician. “Every organ system was touched. The mortality rate [of cancer of the pancreas] is 90 percent, maybe higher.”
Holton said that his oncologist, Dr. Jeff Zangmeister, was even more pessimistic, but can now joke about it.
“He reminded him about the saying of a person having one foot in the grave. Then, he told me, ‘Well, you had both feet in the grave.’ ”
Late last year, following three surgeries that left him in intensive care for 10 weeks, and with his weight, usually around 170 pounds falling to 124 pounds, Holton went home. He believed he was about to die.
“I called the funeral home, and told them to come on down,” said Holton. “I paid up front with my insurance policies. I also had a guy from a cemetery come to the house, and I picked my plot.”
Holton also asked longtime friend Fritz Drake, a former publicist with the Ohio State Racing Commission, to deliver the eulogy at his wake.
“It was October when Terry asked me,” said Drake. “I told myself I’d probably never see him alive again. I even started the eulogy. In fact, I still have some of the notes in a desk drawer at home.”
And the guy from the cemetery who thought he saw a spirit?
“I was out running some errands recently and ran into the guy who came out to the house to help me select a plot,” said Holton. “The face he made was really something. I know he thought he saw a ghost. Heck, he may have gone back to the cemetery to see if I had been in the ground.”
Holton, who recently had a cancer-free checkup that Zangmeister called “fabulous,” isn’t sure what cured him but he knows what enabled him to start eating solid foods earlier this year after going six months without them.
“I took a Canadian drug called Domperidone,” said Holton. “It gets the stomach muscles going and it worked for me.”
Soldano is quick to downplay the drug as a miracle worker.
“It has absolutely nothing to do with the cancer,” he said. “We tried everything to stimulate Terry’s stomach. He researched the drug and got it on his own. At that point, he really had nothing to lose.”
Holton, who in his long career has driven nearly 2,000 winners for purses approaching $5 million, currently is training a small stable at Scioto Downs. He hopes to drive before the year is out.
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Being Still in the Midst of Cancer: A Story of Faith, Friendship and Miracles“We’re blessed every day,” said Soldano. “I don’t know if it’s prayer or the people he surrounds himself with, but Terry is an amazing story. I can’t believe I’m looking at the same guy.”
Jerry Knappenberger, general manager of the Ohio Harness Horsemen’s Association, probably summed up Holton’s recovery better than anybody.
“Beating cancer is like winning the Little Brown Jug from the eight hole,” he said.
Make that a lifetime of Jug victories.
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