Cancer patient finds true friends
Dave Stewart hasn’t had many close friends during the past dozen years in Florida.
The man who was found wandering barefoot around The Acreage last month has been in and out of hospitals this year with few visitors.
Now, he has lots of friends. In late May, I wrote about Stewart, who has Stage 4 throat cancer. Strangers from The Acreage came together to help him with money, food, a place to stay and friendship.
When that story ran, he had just gotten out of the hospital and was still too sick to talk. He is feeling better, and he called me back to tell his story and say just how much all the support means.
“I’m overwhelmed by it all,” he said. “I can’t believe it. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”
Stewart came from New Jersey to Florida in 2004 after a divorce to work on his problems with alcohol. He always wanted to live in the South and close to the beach so he bounced around Delray Beach, West Palm Beach and Boca Raton. He has been sober for six years, but he ran into new problems when he was diagnosed with cancer about six months ago.
Stewart had been feeling the symptoms for a couple months, but said he was too stubborn to see a doctor. After the diagnosis, he stayed in a trailer in The Acreage. He doesn’t know why he walked out of it, but doctors say chemotherapy caused the strange behavior.
He remembers the morning that Clint Berryhill found him, and Stewart knows he’s lucky. The then-stranger got Stewart medical attention, spread the word for people to help and visited him several times in the hospital where they would talk for hours.
It snowballed from there. Stewart was offered a place to stay rent-free where he said he has been welcomed like family. People have been stopped by to drop off so much food for him that he estimates he has enough for two months.
Locals are organizing multiple fundraisers including one at 7 p.m. Thursday, June 22, at Hot Pie on Okeechobee Boulevard in Royal Palm Beach. His son, his son’s girlfriend and his niece are coming down from New Jersey expense-free for the event thanks to the Relay For Life.
Stewart’s voice lifted at the thought of seeing them.
If he’s able to fight off the cancer, Stewart wants to buy an RV and drive around the country. Never having ventured out of the East, he wants to see as much of the United States as he can. Stewart knows he’s fighting an uphill battle against the cancer and doesn’t expect to live more than a few more years. He wants to enjoy the time he has left.
But first he wants to get better and thank everyone.
“The people in this community have all gone so far and away to help me and they’re all strangers,” Stewart said. “I can’t wait to be able to meet them all and hug them all and thank them all in person.”
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