WAR AND SILENT WAR By Ned Soseman - an update of our Solider Story
Imagine you’re 41 years old, driving along I-44 when your cell phone rings. The caller is your family doctor who says you have been diagnosed with cancer and have only one to three months to live. Shock, despair, anger, frustration, hopelessness; you’re instantly overwhelmed with the worst.
What do you do when the next call is from hospice? If you are Staff Sergeant Daniel Barber of Missouri National Guard D Company 1-106th AVN, you hang up on hospice and give all you’ve got to begin strategizing to win a silent war against Stage 4 liver cancer.
All the motivation and focus Staff Sergeant Barber needed was his doctor telling him “You’re going to die, don’t get your hopes up,” a loving family, and a son too young to understand. His mission was “to live long enough to explain what was happening to my son.” His plan was to “not take no for an answer.” He and his family began praying the first of countless prayers.
Military veteran Staff Sergeant Barber has been to war before. He was a soldier in Operation Desert Storm in 1990 and deployed twice more, from 2003 to 2005 and from 2008 to 2009, both for Operation Iraqi Freedom Delta Company 1-106th.
His first deployment was Al Quasumma, Saudi Arabia. When his C-141 transport from the states landed at King Fahd Airport, the airport was under scud missile attack. That’s when he appreciated why he and his fellow soldiers wore combat gear and were fully armed on the flight. He describes the scud missile attack as “the wild-wild west. There were lots of air raid sirens blaring.”
Staff Sergeant Barber is a positive, affable man better known to his friends as Dan. Today, he looks acts and feels perfectly healthy. He is the husband of Deanna and father of Luke, who will soon turn 11 years old. Dan was born in southeastern Missouri and graduated from high school in Perryville MO, where he was an All-State Linebacker. He headed on to Linn State Technical College in Linn MO and graduated in the aviation maintenance program.
Technical college wasn’t inexpensive and Dan was burdened with student loans to prove it. He learned of a student loan repayment bonus program offered by the Missouri National Guard and enlisted in 1989. His student loans were repaid but that’s not the only reason joining the Guard was one of the best decisions Dan ever made. He is living proof that “The Army leaves no-one behind.”
Far the battlefield but suddenly confronted by the unthinkable, Dan quickly became his own best advocate, receiving support from the Army, former MO Congresswoman Jo Ann Emerson and MO Senator Roy Blunt. Dan’s silent war with cancer uncovered a little known treatment that has proven successful for him, and it uses red tape to fund the treatment he needs. Dan is winning personal battles for himself and his family and bringing hope to other Americans battling carcinoid cancer.