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Life In Focus: A photographer's journey

EDITORS NOTE: Record-Eagle photojournalist Doug Tesner was sick, badly so. A lifelong smoker, Tesner, 64, battled lung cancer that spread to his lymph nodes. His outlook was bleak, and he was in Munson Medical Center for treatment. Tesner and his wife, Peggy, agreed to allow Record-Eagle reporter Lindsay VanHulle and photojournalist Jan-Michael Stump to follow their journey, document his life and examine an illness that each year claims about 160,000 lives in this country.

"Patient awaits cancer's toll" is the first in this series. Other articles:

Related Photos

Lindsay VanHulle
Doug Tesner

August 29, 2010

Tesner's last gift — his story

By Lindsay VanHulle The Record Eagle Sun Aug 29, 2010, 10:06 AM EDT

The question I have heard most about the Record-Eagle’s series on terminally ill Doug Tesner is also the hardest one to answer.

“How did you do it?”

It’s not a literal question. They’re not asking me about my interviewing techniques, or how I chose the details I included.

They want to know how I managed enough composure to sit at my friend’s bedside as he was dying.

I never really know what to tell them.

Before he lost his battle with lung cancer in June, Doug Tesner was a Record-Eagle photographer known as much for his sense of humor as for his smoking habit. We were colleagues and friends.

Now his car isn’t parked next to mine anymore. His name placard is gone from the wall above his desk. A new photographer sits there. It would appear that life went on.

It always does. But we all notice the void his loss created, and that isn’t likely to go away anytime soon.

Doug wanted the “Life in Focus” series to shed light on an illness that often isn’t understood until it happens to us. He believed enough in what he was doing that he agreed to allow his personal struggle to be made public during one of the most difficult times of his life. From the letters I received after the stories ran, Doug’s story resonated because it, unfortunately, was all too common — he could have been your father, or brother, or son. I will be forever grateful to Doug, because it was his courage that allowed the project to happen.

I wish he could have seen it.

Journalists are supposed to stay detached from their subjects and not become too emotionally involved. We normally don’t write about people we know for this very reason. But this project was unique, in part because of Doug’s willingness to participate.

Covering this story required both professionalism — dates and names needed to be accurate, medical terms needed to be understood and communicated — and humanity. In many ways, I was a silent observer from a chair in the corner of Doug’s hospital room. I scribbled details about everything nurses did when they entered the room so I would remember them later. I wrote down everything his wife, Peggy, and visitors said so I could bring these scenes to life.

And when Peggy cried in the hospital, I held her hand or put my arm on her shoulder. When I left the hospital and she gestured to hug me, I hugged her back. I’ve found reporters who show empathy when covering difficult stories encourage others to open up and trust, and their work often is stronger as a result.

My goal with this project was to capture honestly Doug’s final days and the ways his family and friends coped with his illness. He had hoped communicating would help someone. I hope he knows he did.