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Back behind chair

Longtime barber returns after cancer battle

FIGHTING BACK – Barber Robert Vera sits in his shop in downtown Decatur Tuesday. Vera is back in business after battling stomach cancer. Messenger Photo by Austin Jackson

Decatur barber Robert Vera was alone, tending to his garden, surrounded by the peace of greenery and the occasional gust of wind when he witnessed the fear of God.

Taking deep breaths of fresh air, he manicured leaves with the same patience and time-earned skill he’s shown with his clippers, scissors and combs during 47 years in barber shops from McAllen to Decatur.

Suddenly, Vera stopped. An unmistakable voice rang through his ears that June day a little more than a year ago.

“Veta a la iglesia, hijo,” the voice said.

At the ends of Vera’s tattooed arms, the steady hands of the barber began to shake.

The voice was stern and familiar. He looked around his yard, scanning to see where the voice was coming from. There wasn’t a person in sight.

The owner of Robert’s Barbershop in Decatur said the voice he heard that day was his father’s – eight years after he laid his dad to rest.

“It scared me,” Vera said. “I went and told my pastor, and he told me that was God. Through my dad’s voice, that was God talking to me.”

At the time, Vera didn’t know it, but he had stomach cancer. It took a few months for the purpose of the garden intervention to become clear.

Heeding the command, translated in English as, ‘Go to church, son,’ Vera got right with the man above. Shortly after, he was diagnosed with cancer. To Vera, it was a warning from God for what was to come.

From Nov. 2019 to June 2020, Vera underwent 30 days of antibiotics, eight rounds of chemo therapy, and half of his stomach was removed by surgeons.

Now, the regular in the pews at Christ Fellowship Church in Bridgeport, is back to cutting hair in downtown Decatur, free of cancer.

Vera is back on his own terms.

Inside the shop, beyond the classic barber pole situated outside the shadow of the Wise County Courthouse, Vera watches TV from the barber’s chair, waiting for the chime of the door as customers enter.

The chimes are few and far between these days. And it might be for the best.

Vera’s body remains weakened by the several rounds of chemotherapy. Some days he works for a few hours and others he sees about 10 clients. Each day he makes a point to listen to his gut.

“I have the greatest customers,” Vera said. “They understand. Sometimes, I’ll tell them I need a break. They know what I’ve gone through.”

The gray and black hair on his head is slowly returning with a little more gray than before.

His stomach is split by stitches from his belt line to just below his chest.

“They ripped me open, took out half my stomach and the cancer,” Vera said.

To be sure that the cancer didn’t spread, he went through an additional four rounds of chemotherapy.

Vera weighed 178 pounds before he started treatment. In the midst of chemotherapy, Vera weighed as little as 137 pounds. Now, after reintroducing solid food to his diet, Vera’s back up to 150 pounds.

For months leading up to his diagnosis, Vera felt a constant, nagging pain in his stomach. Each time he visited the hospital, Vera said he was told it was heartburn. On a scale of 1-10, Vera said the pain was always a five, with the occasional spike to eight.

“I told them, this isn’t heartburn. Stop telling me it’s heartburn,” Vera said. “Something’s wrong.”

After Vera’s pleas, his physician’s assistant eventually listened. Within a few days, a scope with a tiny camera, winding down Vera’s throat, revealed clusters of helicobacter pylori in his stomach.

According to the US National Library of Medicine, infection with H. pylori is the strongest known risk factor for gastric cancer – the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide.

The doctor didn’t sugar coat it after receiving the results. On Nov. 23, Vera got the news.

“He told me straight up, ‘You have cancer,'” Vera said.

After leaving the doctor’s office, Vera pulled over and wept.

“I went to my truck, cried like a little b-,” Vera said. “I went to RaceTrac, bought a pack of cigarettes and I smoked one cigarette in two puffs. I don’t even smoke. I haven’t in years. It was bad news. How can you take news like that? Bad news is bad news. There’s no way I could take it.”

Under the cloud of the C-word was good news, though. His doctors believed Vera’s stomach cancer was found in the first stage and it was treatable. Vera was ready to fight for his life.

After the diagnosis, Vera went on an antibiotic for 30 days and began chemotherapy. The treatment ravaged his body.

“That stuff is poison,” Vera said.

As Vera’s cancer treatment began, so did a worldwide pandemic. The onset of COVID-19, in the midst of a cancer battle, had positives and negatives. The drive to receive treatment was under an hour with no traffic due to people working from home.

“I didn’t mind that,” he said.

But it was bad for his business, with barber shops shut down by government mandates. Vera was at a higher risk, his body already locked in a fight against cancer. In April, after four rounds of chemotherapy, Vera went under the knife to remove half of his stomach with no one by his side.

After the surgery, Vera continued four more rounds of chemo.

“I said, ‘Why am I getting another round of chemo if the cancer is already out?'” Vera said. “They told me, ‘It’s just in case there’s something we can’t see that’s there.’ June 23 was my last treatment. I was so grateful. Chemo is something else.”

Through it all, Vera continued to cut hair when he could to keep his business afloat. In May, a fire at Rooster’s Roadhouse damaged the electrical wiring of his business, shutting him down for a month. Fire, cancer and a pandemic challenged Vera.

Robert Vera is back behind the barber chair after a battle with stomach cancer.

But he’s back.

Vera still deals with the effects of chemo on his body. He was told he could feel the effects for 90 more days.

His fingers and toes still tingle. He’s still working to regain his strength. After eating broth and protein shakes for months, Vera is starting to eat solid food again, even though it still doesn’t taste the same.

Throughout his fight, Vera hasn’t considered hanging up the scissors, even when the stomach pain returns.

“What else would I do?” Vera asked.

Over the past few months, Vera has been busy fixing do-it-yourself, pandemic haircuts for his clients. Customers and Vera now don masks in the chair. He’s adapted.

“Some look pretty bad, but I can fix them,” Vera said.

Vera’s scissor and clipper skills began in 1973, after his service in the army.

He started with $1 high and tight buzz cuts at the army base in Ft. Lewis, Wash. It was there he found a love for the trade.

“It gave me an idea,” Vera said. “Here’s a whole platoon of guys, and I was thinking, that’s $30 bucks in less than an hour. I thought, I can do this; I can make a living from this.”

Shortly after, following a stint working in a factory in Chicago, Vera started cutting hair in McAllen.

“I was doing basically the same thing that my uncles and dad had been doing, and I didn’t like that,” Vera said. “They worked their butts off in a factory, they made good money, but they didn’t get nowhere.”

Vera quit and followed his family to South Texas where he finished barber school and began his career. He made a mark on the town, shaping up the ‘hair design’ that John Travolta made popular from “Saturday Night Fever.”

“They all wanted to look like Travolta, staying alive,” Vera said.

Hair styles have changed and some classic looks have returned during Vera’s 47 years of being a barber. Through cancer, fires and working nights at McDonald’s to keep his business afloat, Vera has remained a constant behind the chair.

He wears his army hat, tattoos and the scars from his battle with stomach cancer with pride.

It’s a reflection of what he’s been through. Vera said he’s been given a second chance. And he’s not going to waste it.

“Hey, I’m still alive,” Vera said. “God has given me another chance at life. If I can see my grandkids grow up, and maybe get another 20 years, great. But I know I’m good with God.”

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