The Bolings' story begins in early February. With Wes traveling extensively, Lisa, a native of Canada, decided to take their toddler son Cameron to spend a month at her mom's cottage in Quebec, just outside of Ottawa.
"It was a chance for (Lisa) to take an opportunity to recharge a bit ... a chance to have some winter cottage time," Wes said.
Just as Wes was about to pick up his family and return home together, Lisa began to experience some unusual symptoms. Luckily, she sought treatment.
The diagnosis was acute leukemia.
"If she had waited three or four more days to go to the hospital, she would possibly not be with us anymore," he said. "It was terrifying."
Wes said the challenge is tackling the disease as quickly as possible. After that, he said, leukemia generally is treatable, with a good prognosis.
In the two weeks after the diagnosis and treatment, the biggest risk, doctors told the Bolings, is sudden bleeding.
On Feb. 14, a week into Lisa's stay at the Ottawa (Ontario) Hospital, Wes said the doctor walked into Lisa's room and told the Bolings that, knock on wood, he thought they were "past the scariest part of this leukemia."
Early the next morning, Wes — back at his mother-in-law's cottage after spending the previous week sleeping at the hospital — was awakened by a call: Lisa was being rushed into life-saving brain surgery.
Surgery to stem the bleeding and stabilize the brain lasted around eight hours. It went well as it could.
In the days after, some key questions remained.
How much brain damage did she suffer? How much mental capacity would she have?
Would her brain be damaged enough that it would be difficult to justify continued existence?
Doctors told the family to prepare for some final decisions.
Three days later, with the medicine wearing off, it was time to test Lisa's responsiveness. Doctors didn't expect much.
But something good happened. Finally.
"She started responding to basic commands," Wes said. "She didn't speak, but her movements indicated she understood."
Two days later, the same doctor who had delivered a grim prognosis visited Lisa's room again.
He was in tears. Of joy.
The ventilator was removed, and the long road to recovery had begun.
Well, it's really two roads of recovery: the first is the cancer road. Wes said there's a "tremendous prognosis at this point." Lisa is in full remission. Not a trace of cancer remains.
"And so the arsenic will, in theory, and in all likelihood, keep this cancer from ever being a thing that enters her life again," Wes said. "So that is a very stable, a very good place."
The second road, however, is longer, bumpier and wrought with potholes. The brain bleed caused lasting damage.
"Lisa is able to function well, to do most things for herself, to remember who people are, to remember her past, to speak, to write, to read," Wes said.
"Where she struggles at times is the short-term memory — knowing what happened an hour ago, so that is going to require extensive speech therapy and occupational therapy to get her back to being as mentally and physically independent as she can be. So that's where the biggest challenge is for us."
Lisa spent more than two months hospitalized in Canada, mostly in intensive care, far from her Nashville home. She celebrated her 39th birthday there; Wes is also 39.
On April 18, she was flown by an air ambulance to Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville to continue her recovery and begin cancer treatment. After a brief stay at a rehabilitation facility in Nashville, she and the family were sent to QLI, a prominent rehabilitation center in Omaha, Neb.
From mid-May through mid-July, she received physical, speech and occupational therapy for six grueling hours per day, with the goal of becoming as independent as possible.
The Bolings finally returned home in July. The arsenic infusions started soon thereafter.
Cameron, the Bolings' son, turned 4 in August. He hadn't seen his mom for 2 1/2 months during the ordeal. How would he react when he finally saw her? How would Lisa, fighting memory issues and low energy, react?
When Cameron walked into the room, Wes said, the tone of her voice to him was the same as before.
"He climbed up, and he read with her, and she read to him, and that moment told me, 'This is all going to be OK.'"
Cameron, Wes said, isn't seeing Lisa, the hospital patient; rather, he's seeing his mommy.
"That moment of connection between the two of them was so special," Wes said. "I had to remind myself just to step back and let them have this time."
Throughout the last 10 months, Wes, who has been with Nokian Tyres for six years, has kept himself busy with work. He recently returned from Romania, where the Nokia, Finland-based tire maker inaugurated production at its newest factory, a $720 million passenger tire plant in Oradea that the company labels a zero-CO2-emission tire plant.
His co-workers, both in the U.S. and abroad, have been extremely supportive, showering him with love and empathy.
"I have always resisted very strongly calling any workplace a family," Wes said. "I think that can undervalue the meaning of the word family, and it can put too much pressure on a workplace. But if it's possible for a workplace to be a family, then Nokian Tyres has been a family to me."
He calls the work "therapeutic" and expressed love for his colleagues.
Working a regular schedule, he said, "even through a lot of this chaos, was good for me. It's a healthy outlet with people that you know really care for you, will drop anything at a moment's notice to help."
This is one of the values stated by Nokian Tyres: We respect and take care of each other, our consumers, customers, partners and the globe.
"I can definitely attest to that fact," Wes said. "You always want your company to back up what it says it is in moments when it really needs to."
For its part, Nokian offered a simple but powerful message to the Bolings.
"From all of us at Nokian Tyres, we are with you on the road to recovery, through the healing, and beyond," the tire maker said.
Life has changed dramatically over the last 10 months for the family. Hopefully, the road will wind through more mountains than valleys.
On Oct. 10, Lisa came through cranioplasty surgery successfully, replacing the bone flap that was removed during her original brain surgery. The synthetic piece, attached to her remaining skull, stretches from the top of her forehead to the top of her head. Thanks to the power of modern medicine, the piece is 3D-printed to follow the contour of her skull.
They called the surgery routine. "But it's not routine when it's your your wife's brain they're talking about, you know?" Wes said.
Lisa is back home. She had been wearing a helmet to protect further injury. Once she no longer needs it, Wes and Lisa joked about throwing it in the river.
That, of course, is not sustainable, and sustainability is another pillar of Nokian Tyres' philosophy.
So, Lisa said, the plan is to turn the helmet into a planter, perhaps making life a little more beautiful.
And if it helps Lisa, just as the hope is in telling her story, it will be well worth it.
