What Do We Do With Good News.

2/8/2010 – (This could be a little lengthy) What do we do with good news? Before I knew that I was going to start treatments, Jan and I had planned to go on a week-long Caribbean cruise that Jan had earned through her work. We were looking forward to it mostly because in our 25 years of marriage Jan has wanted to do this as a life quest and goal. I was very happy for her and for myself as a “significant other.”

I knew the cruise was going to take away a full week of school and I had saved up most of the trip in personal days but then the news came at Christmas that I would have to start treatments it meant three days of treatments a month for six months. These days would always be during school, in Fargo, which meant missing a lot of school which I am not used to doing. I felt like I needed to tell my administration immediately and without hesitation they said, “Now you defiantly need to go.” I was indeed gratified.

We wrapped the treatments around our cruise and so the week we were cruising, was the final week before my second treatment. We did this so that I had the best chance of feeling as good as possible and it indeed worked well. I felt great, ate well, enjoyed the Caribbean and had pretty good energy, all without knowing how affective my first round of chemo had been. I was suppose to have done some blood work in between treatments to monitor the effectiveness but I just didn’t do them. Knowing or not knowing didn’t seem to be important; I felt good and was looking forward to our time away.

We left mounds of white sand and arrived in mounds of white snow, about an 85 degree swing in a period of six hours. We arrived back in Fargo on Sunday night and I had to be at the Roger Maris Cancer Center at 7:30 in the morning for blood work prior to my second round of treatment and to see my oncologist, Dr. Gross. The temperature swing would not be the biggest turnaround.

Not knowing over what time period and how exactly the chemo works I was hoping for a significant drop in the numbers that were giving all of us the greatest concern, such as white blood count (WBC). Most normal readings would be in the 4000-9000 range. WBC’s are the cells that fight disease and a heightened WBC count would indicate a immune system reaction. When I started treatments my WBC was 92,000, my body was at full war with my cancer and not keeping up.

As I sat down with my cancer doctor her looked at me and smiled slightly and said, “This treatment really worked, all of your numbers are back in the normal range. If a doctor were to look at these numbers he would never know that you had cancer.” I was stunned, my WBC was back to 5000, my platelet counts were normal, liver, kidney, spleen size and function are seemingly back to normal. I teared a little and muttered to my doctor, “this is a thank you Jesus moment” and he agreed.

My tears and thoughts were out of gratitude and wonder. This was the first time since I was diagnosed with cancer that I said, “Why me?” I truly wondered why God had shown his great mercy to me with the effectiveness of the treatment. Now this was no pronouncement of a “cure” but it was indeed the best news I could have gotten. Since the treatment had worked so seemingly well I asked him why I needed five more sets of treatment and he said, “the treatment seemingly has worked very well on the blood and the blood organs but reaching the bone marrow will take more treatments.” But he did go on to say that he felt like I had a better than 50-50 chance of being able to stop chemo after just four treatments. This depending on a bone marrow biopsy following my third treatment, if the bone marrow shows the same kind of reduced WBC numbers I will only have four treatments.

Back to the why me, I truly yet have never had a sense that my cancer was somehow unfair. As a matter of fact I have felt like more often that I have probably been living on borrowed time to some degree. When I was younger I kind of lived my life with the “I’d rather burn out than rust” mentality. As I have often said with both pleasure and regret, “I have done just about anything you can imagine, and some things you can’t imagine.” And here out of God’s graciousness He has seemingly granted me more “length of days.”

My father was truly one of the Godliest men I have ever known. He was saved early in life and never deviated from his walk with the Lord. I never heard him swear, he never drank, smoked, played cards, and only danced unrythemicly with my mother when in an intimate embrace, he read his Bible daily with my mother, he was active in church, he was truly by my standards “a man of God.”

One time after disappointing him with some under-age celebrating he said to me, “I just don’t see what you get out of that. I smoked just once in my life and I never had a drink.” Wow I thought in my youthfulness, is that possible or even healthy and it certainly was not living life to the fullest. I have fought against the feelings of legalism my whole life, sometimes while in great sin and sometimes in periods of great spiritual depth. But my father never struggled with that, it’s just what the Lord wanted him to do and he did it without question and to be a good testimony to his neighbors and friends that having Jesus in your life really does make a difference.

What should my response be? Reading the Acts of the Apostles chapter 3 gave me a little insight. In this chapter Peter and John have been empowered by the Holy Spirit after Jesus’ ascension as He had promised. While heading to the temple to speak with power they encounter a 40 year old cripple beggar who they heal who then starts praising Jesus and these men. Of course this causes the religious to be threatened and demand to know under whose authority these men speak and heal and their response is simple and powerful and needs to be the letterhead for all thoughts about who or how people can be saved.

They were jailed that night because 5000 people had heard their message and been saved. Peter and John were brought before the Jewish Council and some of the same men who had questioned Jesus were again leading the questions, Annas the High Priest, Caiaphas, John, Alexander and other relative (Acts 4:5) and they were asked this question, “By what power, or by whose authority have you done this?” Then Peter filled with the Holy Spirit said “… v10 let me clearly state to you and to all that this was done in the name of Jesus…….. even though you yourselves tried to kill Him (Jesus)…. Let it be stated again (the greatest and most powerful statement of fact in world history) Acts 4:11-12 For Jesus the Messiah is a stone discarded by the builders which became the capstone of the arch.12: There is salvation in no one else! Under all heaven there is NO other name for men to call upon to save them.” (physically or spiritually) Oh He heals indeed but even more so He saves eternally.

Just like the chemo mentioned earlier, Jesus has entered my life and continues to kill the spiritual cancer cells in my life, it is a life-long quest of the Holy Spirit to get those sins out of my very marrow but Praise be to Jesus, I'm healed whether He heals me of cancer or not for I have cried out to Him and he has saved me.