overwhelming moment emotionally because i was connecting with all that bruce was going through and at the same time feeling a bit of a burden for where this might go. this turned out to be, sanjay, a key to the idea of a council, which is, it s a burden. he s a dad. all accept for one of these men is a dad. they have busy lives. they ve got their own families, they ve got their own kids. so i wasn t, in effect, giving them my kids. i was saying, will you just be there, will you take this one side of me and will you convey them that idea. reporter: jeff would capture bruce s adventurous side. part vermont farmer, part world traveler. jeff is as comfortable driving a tractor and shearing sheep as he is exploring the catacombs of paris. his philosophy, get off the beaten track. that s a style that immediately connected for an 18-year-old bruce. i can remember us hiking
fairly high percentage of cases, essentially every three months they ve got to go check my lungs. reporter: march 2010, bruce travelled to new york city for the first year cat scan of his lungs. just blocks from where he first called linda to tell her he had cancer. on this day, the news was very different. hey, wivy, how are you? they have nothing there. it was a good day. it was a good call. reporter: still, it is hard not to worry. at any moment, you can get a scan and a call is not so good. it sends you right back. and it s been one year, it hasn t been five years. and if that five-year call, you re cancer free, you know, i think we ll start planning their wedding. reporter: in fact, the counsel is also standing by.
that day in 2008 that jeopardized everything about the future he had imagined, bone cancer, a rare form of cancer. more specifically, osteo sarcoma, usually strikes people much younger than bruce. there s never a moment that has not shadowed in some way by that phone call that cancer illness, the idea of dying, is never that far away. reporter: just days after the diagnosis, cape cod. bruce was consumed by a sense of loss. the man who had made a living by walking knew he might never walk again, might not live to see the twins grow up. his thoughts focused on them. i m a person who has tried in my life to dream undreamable dreams. teach them how to dream. who is the person i m going to say, tell them if they want to run a marathon, open a restaurant, write a book, cook the hardest souffle, who is
they re 40. bruce was 45. it s very uncommon to have the diagnosis. reporter: dr. john healey is memorial sloan keterring in new york. he would be the general leading the fight against bruce s cancer. i hate cancer. and i know it s not going to show my patient any mercy, and i m not going to show it any mercy. reporter: when you looked at his films and after you examined him, did you already pretty much know what you were going to do when you left the room? i knew that he needed chemotherapy, followed by surgery, and what we call a wide excision, which means removing the tumor and taking out a rim of normal tissue out all of the way around it. i was confident that could save his leg. reporter: healey knew that saving a leg was critical to bruce s identity. he was, after all, the walking guy. but he also knew it wouldn t be easy. for months, these warriors pursued the battle on two fronts.
while a titanium prosthesis to replace the diseased thigh bone was painstakingly developed, bruce suffered through rounds of chemo to disrupt the tumor. for 4 1/2 months, pneumonia, ear infections, dozens of pounds lost, three hospitalizations. i could just feel my body sort of slipping away. reporter: even as bruce was fighting for his life, the counsel of dads rallied around the family. some with daily phone calls, others weekly visits. jeff shumlen had a different tactic, one postcard a day every single day for a year. reporter: that s a lot of postcards to see them all like this, what s that like? i have to say, it s it s impressive to walk in here and see these postcards on the desk. i wanted bruce to know that i was with him. reporter: bruce needed those postcards. the hardest part was about to come.