Getting Healthy

Last month I did the devotional at our monthly deacon’s meeting. For the topic I chose the topic of suffering and I centered the devotional around 1 Peter 5:10, "After you've suffered awhile, the Lord make you mature, perfect." I discussed how suffering is part of God’s plan and that the Bible tells us that there is a purpose for our suffering. After the devotional I had to leave the meeting early because I was feeling nauseous. That very same night I was taken to the emergency room for an intestinal blockage.

I think almost all men imagine that they are brave in times of their suffering. We all want to have a high pain threshold. As Christians, we are told to rejoice in our suffering as a show of faith towards God. However, I can honestly say that I was embarrassed at how I behaved in the ER that night with what I was going through with the intense dehydration and vomiting. That night was not my best show.

I was admitted into the hospital and without going into details, I can say the following week was an awful week. At some point though, I turned to God and confessed, “I am a weak and wretched man, but right now I just need your comfort.” The following morning I was allowed to start a liquid diet, and within a couple of days the obstruction began to resolve. The doctors were happy with my progress and I was allowed to go home for the holidays.

Experiences like these provide vivid contrast in life. It is like I sometimes go through life in a blurry haze, and then something like this happens and it is like putting on the 3D glasses at the movie theater—life jumps out at you. The thing I marvel at is the immense, eye-popping love and joy that emerges. I felt a tremendous amount of love from God, my wife and family, our friends, our Church and my work. The support has been tremendous and we really do appreciate it. I have been going through this for four years, and people continue to provide amazing support for us; I feel bad because I feel helpless to repay everyone for what they have given my family. It’s not like we had a rough go for a month or two, and we are past it. This is an on-going challenge.

It has been almost a month since I was hospitalized for the intestinal blockage. I have been off of chemo since then and right now we are concentrating on getting me healthy again. The two main things we are trying to get into working order is the eating and the breathing. I still have lots of healthy lung tissue, but the tumors in my lungs have still paid a toll. I have a lot of shortness of breath and coughing and I have to be careful about the coughing fits because it will irritate the tumors. Things with the breathing have improved considerably though since they removed about a liter of liquid from my left lung.

Also, we believe I have developed some sort of auto-immune response to either the cancer or the chemotherapy. This has been a considerable challenge since October because of the fatigue and muscle/joint pain it causes. The most frustrating part of this is it has limited my activity quite a bit.

Today I was at UMC for a procedure to evaluate the mobility of my digestive track. Even though we were able to avoid surgery for the intestinal blockage, I still have a partial blockage and it doesn’t seem to have improved much since then. This procedure typically takes several hours but I was there for over 7 hours. The technician told me she has never seen it take so long for the contrast to move through the small bowels so I don’t take that as a good sign. The challenge is that there is no reliable way to know what the blockage is caused by. The good news is that the radiologist said it was not characteristic of a tumor, but rather it was likely due to adhesions. He said there were several strictures that were causing the slow mobility. Most likely I will have to be very careful about my diet for a while to avoid another complete blockage while trying to get enough calories to bring my weight back up.

The main thing is that we want to get back to chemotherapy soon. I have been through the whole circle of standard therapies for metastasized colorectal cancer, so the last two treatments I have been on were somewhat experimental and unfortunately neither was really impressive in how effective they were. However, there are still many options out there and the medical community continues to evolve these treatments at an unprecedented rate. There is much to be hopeful about for my progress in 2011. The brain tumor and hip tumor seem very stable. The most troubling tumors are the ones in my lungs, but like I mentioned, I still have healthy lung tissue. It seems the struggles over the past several months have been mainly due to maintaining my body after four years of ongoing cancer treatments.

We were blessed to have a wonderful Christmas this year. I am very glad for my savior Jesus Christ and we had an excellent celebration of His birth. Despite all of the adversity we face in life, the joy of being a Christian is an inexhaustible flame.