I had big plans for this summer, I have been planning converting an interior back porch to what was going to be the best fly tying room ever. I had everything mapped out including aquariums, hatch charts, maps and not to forget all the furs, hairs, feathers and such. It would have been super cool!

Back in early May I visited a Dermatologist (happens to be a flyfisherman!) to have what I thought was two warts removed one from each thumb. The first was no problem but the second was "peculiar", so he removed a portion of it and sent it out for identification. When I returned to his office for the results I was more interested in picking his brain about local trout streams and was totally unprepared to hear that I had...have a rare form of cancer. I will spare you all the long name. Winds up this is a rare cancer that has only 57 documented cases. About a week later I was ran through a battery of tests, scans and pokes because in 14% of the cases it metastisized into other portions of the body.. mostly the lungs. I was super happy to hear that the results showed no other cancer but they would still have to amputate my left thumb at the first joint and do a axillary biopsy on my lymph nodes in my armpit. As all of this is playing out I happened to notice where the first wart the doctor removed had a small bump under the skin so I shared it with my surgeon and he thought that it was nothing but we should still biopsy it to be sure since I would be knocked out.

After I woke up from the surgery the doctor informed me that prelimary results showed that the biopsy on my other thumb showed the same cancer !!!! What is the chances??? The good news was the biopsy on my lymph nodes showed no cancer. The bad news is I have to go back next week to have my right thumb fully amputated! So I will only have 2/3 on one side and zero on the other!! My first fear was that I would not be able to fly fish anymore so about 4 days after my surgery I took to a local stream with the family to have a picnic or so my wife thought! I had my 7 year old ready to retrieve and release any fish I might catch since I was all bandaged up. I mostly wanted to try out not using my thumbs to see if this whole amputation thing was going to ruin fly fishing. Well I think tying knots will be very challenging but all in all it is doable... wish I could say the same about fly tying! I do not think it will be possible at all. So there goes the fly tying room!