![]() Casey cultivated roses that bloomed from pale pink to vivid red, growing impossibly high.Ĭasey grew up in the trailer. Next door was Erasmo Villa, from Mexico, who with his brother-in-law had drywalled the Daileys’ home free of charge just because they were neighbors, and neighbors help each other. Three homes over, there was Casey’s grandma’s bowling partner. Casey’s parents lived across the street, next to her aunt. But four generations of family members and friends filled the homes on their block. Their trailer-park community had its drugs and gangs and violence, the evening cracks of gunfire and whining sirens. Casey made their uncertain income stretch, scrapping junk metal and advertising homemade quilts for $50 on social media it took her about a week to make each one. Lately, he had been working for a friend’s tree-service firm. He had survived explosions, survived co-workers. The finances were in his wife’s name in case he did not make it home. For more than a dozen years, he had operated heavy machinery at oil refineries, clawing trenches into the earth for foundations and pipe racks. The Daileys were what Wayne called a “simple, simple family”: Casey, a housewife who home-schooled their oldest son, Luke, 14 their youngest son, Ronnie, 10 and Wayne himself, a “middle-class worker, a lower-class worker,” without a steady job. The family lived outside the Houston city limits in northeast Harris County, in a trailer park where homes stretched along fancifully named streets - Drifting Winds, Island Song and theirs, Enchanted Path Drive. Most important, to the surgeon it appeared benign.Īfter Casey was settled in her hospital room, Wayne drove home to spend the night with their two sons. The tumor was the width of Wayne’s two thumbs put together. Wray called him from the waiting area and showed him an image on his phone. ![]() Wayne asked to see the tumor when it was out. Surprising Wayne and Casey, he predicted she would be home in 24 hours. His team had performed the operation many times. Wray, the senior surgeon, came in and reassured them. He described the operation’s potential complications - bleeding, infection, damage to other organs - which frightened Wayne. That morning, a resident surgeon said Casey should expect to stay three or four days for recovery. Casey could not wait to look and feel like herself again. ![]() The diagnosis helped explain many of her problems, from high blood pressure to erratic moods. Curtis Wray, a surgical oncologist, to remove what doctors suspected was a noncancerous tumor that was releasing extra cortisol, causing her Cushing’s syndrome. The mass appeared on a 2015 scan for kidney stones, doctors realized, but because it is a common and typically nonproblematic finding, its significance was missed.Ĭasey was referred to Dr. Weeks of tests produced a diagnosis: Cushing’s syndrome, a curable but potentially deadly disorder caused by an overabundance of cortisol, a steroid hormone. Finally, in late March, after an ambulance took her to the hospital for a bout of severe abdominal pain, doctors detected a mass on one of her adrenal glands. She blamed herself, ascribing her weight gain to overeating. The illness left her in pain, nauseated and unable to stand for more than 15 minutes at a time.Ĭasey Dills-Dailey talking about her health issues on March 26, 2016.Ĭasey would scour books and the internet to help others solve medical or legal problems - Wayne, 39, called her a doctor without a degree - but the cause of her own health issues had eluded her. Her face became chubby, and her full-but-shapely figure ballooned to nearly 250 pounds, fattening in odd places, including the space between her shoulders. She had hot flashes and eventually stopped menstruating. The operation came after years of mysterious symptoms that began when Casey was in her early 30s. Still, Wayne wondered, would the surgery do what it was supposed to do? Was the doctor as skilled as he said he was? It was hard to grasp that the life of his 38-year-old wife could be endangered. ![]() The surgeon predicted an uncomplicated operation, conducted through tiny incisions. Casey Dills-Dailey was undergoing surgery to remove the adrenal gland above her left kidney. But coastal storms were a part of life that he had prepared for, and they did not concern him. “It’s going to get us,” he told his sister. Wayne, who as a child in Galveston County spent hours watching the cloudscapes drift over the Gulf of Mexico, kept multiple weather apps on his phone and had already been tracking the storm. 23, 2017, and broadcasters described a large storm moving off the Yucatán Peninsula with Texas in its sights, potentially bringing historic flooding to Houston that weekend. He and his sister stared at the television to distract themselves. Wayne Dailey sat in a waiting area at a Houston hospital, anxious for word about his wife.
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