At 7:45 a.m. Friday, Tenore, a retired Dayton police lieutenant and investigator for the Montgomery County prosecutor’s office, will have his right arm and shoulder amputated at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“I’m going to lose my right arm and hand, my dominant hand,” he said. “I’m OK with it because I understand what it’s going to accomplish,” he said.
He understands he’ll be pain-free.
If you don’t know Tenore, you might have heard his name. He’s participated in local celebrity boxing matches for charity, volunteered at Camp Emanuel, and run for Montgomery County Sheriff. He used to pull 400-pound-plus weights on sleds to stay in shape.
“The guys I was working out with never thought I would be able to do it, so I did it,” said a man who doesn’t shy away from a challenge.
He and his wife, Karen, who worked for the city of Dayton, planned to spend their retirement years with their daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren, who live in Ohio, and occasionally fly to Arizona to see his son and daughter-in-law.
But his shoulder issues started in 2019, when doctors discovered a tumor and removed a portion of the right humerus, the upper arm bone. Doctors said they got all the cancer.
Then, he fell down the stairs carrying a box and landed on his shoulder. He hurt his knee, which needed surgery. Eventually, he needed an operation to replace damage caused in the fall, and that’s when doctors discovered a rare cancer called Chondrosarcoma.
If he had not taken that tumble, who knows whether doctors would have found the growth?
Since his fall three years ago, Mike and Karen have taken more than a dozen trips to Mass General for checkups and other procedures on his right arm that had muscles, tendons and tissues removed.
But over the last few months, the discomfort from a shoulder infection became increasingly worse.
“There were times I (hit) the 10-point (pain) scale they used at hospitals,” he said. “The only time that was worse than that was when I had kidney stones.”
In May, Tenore hurt his shoulder again and went back to Boston for surgery that also cleared up an infection. But since then, the pain hasn’t gotten any better, and the infection returned. Doctors told Tenore there’s only one option left.
So on Thursday, the Tenores will fly to Boston for Friday’s surgery.
He doesn’t know how long he’ll be in the hospital. He’ll need rehab to help him learn how to walk with one arm after a lifetime of balancing with two. Later, he might try to teach himself to write and shoot a gun with his left hand.
He’d like to get a prosthesis, but the cost could easily climb into the tens of thousands of dollars. He’ll need to look into grants and other avenues to cover the cost.
I’ve known Tenore for a long time and am not surprised he’s taking this in stride. Anytime I ask him who he’s doing, he says, “I’m good,” and he means it. He’s not the self-loathing type. As he would say, it is what it is, and he’ll deal with it.
But there is one thing that worries an attentive grandfather.
“My only concern is to explain to my (two) teenage granddaughters what’s going on,” he said before quickly adding, “They’ll understand.”
Ray Marcano’s column appears on these pages each Sunday. He can be reached at raymarcanoddn@gmail.com.
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