Medical Update

My sister Janet is working on finding out whether I can get my cancer treatment paid for through Medicaid and SSI. If so, it would require moving back to the U.S., specifically to Houston if M.D. Anderson, the best cancer hospital in that part of the country, will accept Medicaid.

Of course that would be a severe blow to the vision to which we believe God has called us, to use our circumstances to plant in people’s hearts a confidence in the love of God, an eagerness to be open and vulnerable before him and a few close friends, an ability to more and more find their worth and identity in Christ instead of in things that fail, and ultimately to discover the level of joy and intimacy with God and loved ones that reflects the supreme law of God to love him and our neighbors without reservation. We came here to build a church that would be what church people have always believed church could be. We came here to build a church that would be what unchurched people never imagined it could be. We came here to build a church that everyone will know they were born for, once they’ve begun to experience real, intimate community there. God uses Roland and me together in a way that he does not use us separately, and we’ve seen a wonderful taste in Frisco of what we know God can do here, if we have 20 years here instead of the 5 years that we had in Frisco. Even if I only have a year or two, if I can spend it here we can see the glory of God more fully than if I spend that time on another continent.

At any rate, we’ll come back home if it’s the only way to get medical treatment, and Janet is working on that. Meanwhile, I have an appointment with the oncologist, Rick Abraham, at Holy Spirit Northside Hospital at 10am Tuesday morning, the third of April. That’s 7pm Monday, US Central Time. I understood him to say the actual chemo will start then. He’s persuaded the maker of the most expensive drug to give it to me for free the first month which, along with some other concessions he’s extracted from various parties, brings our cost for the first month’s IV chemo treatment down from $5,000 a month (Australian dollars, which are worth about 80 cents US) to $1,000. We’ve had enough donations come in so far to cover that. While we’re praying for a miraculous complete healing, we’re also praying “give us this day our daily bread”, which he has now done.

On another medical front, when Mark Dutney, the General Practitioner, first diagnosed me and figured out that my insurance company might deny treatment, he contacted Royal Brisbane Hospital which is a very good public hospital, unlike Holy Spirit Northside which is a private hospital. Dutney was hoping Royal Brisbane would somehow be able to treat me for free, even though I’m not under the government healthcare system here that would make it free for citizens. Royal Brisbane has finally gotten back to us. I have an appointment with them on Monday afternoon, the second of April. Karen talked to them, so I’m not sure of the time. At any rate, we’ll talk to a specialist there. The worst that can happen is it’s a wasted afternoon. The best that can happen is that God intervenes and they find a way to give us ongoing free medical treatment.

Meanwhile, I still have no symptoms whatsoever, beyond occasional stomach discomfort, which I understand is not terribly unusual for 50-year-old men. It’s a weird thing to look in the mirror and think: there’s a man who’s dying of cancer, and then go for a long walk through the woods with Roland or Karen, come home and laugh with Emmy and the kids, and get up and go to work the next day.

My mind runs the gamut constantly from grief and fear to hope and gratitude, continually saying “our God is able to deliver us and he will deliver us, but if not, be it known unto you, O King, that we will not bow down.” I live with the daily dichotomy of needing and expecting a miracle, thanking God for another wonderful day, while simultaneously helping Karen think through the things she’ll need to think through “if not”, and trying to think through how to help my children and other loved ones keep their hearts tender and trusting the power and character of God, even “if not.”

In all this, God is still God and love is still enough. This I testify.

Comic Relief

It’s been hard for me to stay focused for a prolonged period lately. My mind is constantly drifting off to quick prayers, imagining a miracle or working through in my mind the things, both practical and spiritual, that I need to help my loved ones work through if I don’t get a miracle. At any rate, that means I’m having difficulty with the kind of intense, prolonged prayer that I have engaged in at times past.

This past Monday, Roland and I attended a district prayer meeting that now happens once a month. Fifteen people were there. Some of the prayer was deeply felt stuff from people’s hearts. Some was still legitimate but less deeply personal, like prayers for the success of upcoming church programs and so forth. At any rate, my mind was beginning to wander back to my own stuff and I was really trying to stay focused. One of my tactics for doing that was just to silently pray along with whoever was praying at that moment, agreeing with that person in prayer, and asking God to grant whatever petition he or she was making.

That tactic for staying focused and in the spirit of prayer with the rest of the group broke down horribly when one young man prayed: “Lord, we pray also for the pastors.” Now there’s nothing in the world wrong with that. It’s a good, necessary, important prayer. My problem is that Australians pronounce the word “pastor” exactly the way we and they pronounce the word “pasta”. So I didn’t hear: “we pray for the pastors”; I heard: “Lord, we pray also for the pastas” and instantly my silly mind was lost to prayer. I went right along with him, agreeing with him in prayer on that misunderstood petition. In my mind I imagined myself praying earnestly:

“Yes, Lord, we pray also for the pastas. We pray for the spaghetti, Lord, and for the rigatoni and the cannelloni. Yea, Lord, even for the macaroni do we pray, both seashell and elbow.”

I was just killing myself and couldn’t share it with anyone. If I had so much as looked at Roland, I would have burst out laughing out loud before I could have explained it to him, and completely disrupted the prayer time. I couldn’t tell him, anyway, though, because Michael Schmidt, our dear district superintendent, was sitting between us. I’m quickly coming to love and appreciate Michael, but I don’t yet know his sense of humor well enough to dare sharing it with him. On the one hand, if he shared my sense of humor it would look bad for the DS to disrupt the prayer meeting by laughing out loud at an inappropriate time. On the other hand, if he decidedly did not share my sense of humor, I’d sound like a blaspheming heretic or something. For a second, as my shoulders shook and I hoped people would think I was crying, I thought I was going to have to just get up and go outside where I could laugh properly.

Finally, the man who had begun praying for the pastas began to get emotional as he prayed for stuff about which he felt very deeply on a personal level, and my heart was drawn to him and through him back into the spirit of prayer. There’s a verse in the Bible that says “Laughter does the heart good like a medicine” so I trust that we don’t leave his presence, and he doesn’t leave us as we move from earnest tears to silly laughter and back again.

In this moment I feel good physically, He has given us this day our daily bread, people all over the world are expressing their love, appreciation and concern for me, lifting me up to our Abba Daddy for a miracle and for peace in the meantime, and in this moment, we have unashamed laughter and joy in his presence. Maybe he laughs when we play the way we laugh when we watch our children play.

"Give us this day...."

A million Bible verses and stories are rushing through my brain this evening. I've thought of Tabitha who died, and so many people showed Paul the things she had done in their lives and all she meant to them, that God used him to bring her back from the dead. I've thought of the cripple whose friends cut a hole in the roof of the house where Jesus was teaching, and let the cripple down through the roof in front of Jesus, for Jesus to heal him, because they couldn't get to Jesus through the crowd. And when Jesus saw "their faith", not the faith of the cripple, but the faith of his friends who loved him so much, Jesus healed the cripple.

But the verse I'm finding peace in right now, that keeps repeating in my head as both a plea and a promise, is a truncated verse from the Lord's Prayer: "Give us this day...." I have this day, and it's good.

Today, on our 30th anniversary, Karen and I sat with Roland at the oncologist's office and listened to him confirm to us that, as far as the doctors are concerned, I'm dying. I have 18-24 months to live.

We went to the oncologist this afternoon to hear his prognosis and treatment recommendations now that he has the results of the colon biopsy. Apparently, we do need a miracle. He said my cancer is not curable. Without treatment the average person with my cancer at this stage lives 8-9 months. With treatment, 24 months. The 5-year survival rate is in the single digits.

There are two kinds of chemo, oral and IV. There's a 30% chance that the cancer will respond to the oral chemo and a 50% chance that it will respond to the IV. The oral chemo costs $1,000 per month. The IV chemo costs $30,000 for a six-month treatment course. He and the colon surgeon and the originally diagnosing general practitioner are all going to argue to the insurance company that the cancer should not be considered pre-existing, but those battles with insurance companies are generally lost.

We talked a little to the oncologist about what we came to Australia to do. We told him that we gave up good insurance in the states to come here in the belief that we had something to offer that would make the lives of many Australians deeply better, and we want time to do that. We said we believe in miracles and we want to give God time to act. The oncologist started thinking about people who owe him favors and ways to get around the cost to get me the IV chemo.

My spiritual challenge is to be like the 3 Hebrews when they were faced with the choice of being thrown into a fiery furnace or denying that God was really God. They said (in the King James Version in which I have it memorized from childhood) "Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us, and He WILL deliver us. But if not, be it known unto thee oh king, that we will not bow down...."

So, I'm learning to be confident that I rest in the arms of my Abba Daddy who loves me, regardless of the outcome, while still praying and believing that he WILL give me a miracle of healing and added years.

Meanwhile, though, we're apparently going to need all the money we can find, regardless. So, as much as I hate it (we built a church that never preached on Sunday morning about money and never took an offering), I have to be willing now to be a recipient of grace, and accept whatever my friends want to offer.

So, our little core group here that is hoping to plant a church soon has set up a bank account here in Brisbane to receive donations for me. Here's what you do from the United States to transfer money into that account:

1. Call your bank and see if they do overseas transfers, they may do it through Bank of America or Chase Manhattan. If your bank is large enough they will have an overseas funds transfer dept and that is who you want to speak to.

2. Ask them to transfer the money to the following details

a. SWIFT code: QBANAU4B (The SWIFT code is the number that identifies banks for the purpose of overseas transfers it stands for “Society for World-wide Interbank Financial Telecommunications”.)

b. BSB# (or routing #) 124066

c. Account Name: NewStart River City Benevolent fund.

d. A/C# 20443878.

(My sister tried the above instructions and said her bank also wanted the name and address of the bank here, to which the money is being transfered. That information is:

Bank of Queensland
Arana Hills
Patricks Place
Cnr Patricks Road & Dawson Parade
Arana Hills QLD 4054
Australia)

I need and have to be willing to accept whatever financial donations people feel led to make, but goodness I seriously must have your prayers. At this point, it sounds like money can buy me 12-18 months. More than that has to be a miracle from God in response to the prayers of the people who love me.

Love,

Brad

The Battle Begins

We went to the scheduled appointment this morning with the bowel surgeon. I think we got everything out of this morning's doctor's visit that we could reasonably have hoped for.

1. They seem intent on treating me regardless of my ability to pay. They are, however, going to fight with the insurance company to try to convince them that it's not pre-existing. And of course, after the encouraging words from the doctor, we got a call from the hospital itself insisting on cash up front to the tune of $700 and something dollars Monday morning before they’ll do the colonoscopy. That’ll wipe out all of our money for groceries and other bills, but we’ll at least get through Monday morning. The oncologist did indicate that he could treat me at Brisbane Royal Hospital and we could get it done there for free regardless. We’ll see. In the meantime, it looks like between this kind of thing and continuing all the expensive recommendations of the naturapath like supplements and organic everything, we’re going to need some real cash coming in from somewhere, somehow, fast. But treatment is still moving ahead, and that’s the main good thing out of all that at the moment.

2. The bowel cancer didn't look nearly as bad to the bowel surgeon as it did to the general practitioner. He doesn't think bowel surgery will be necessary.

3. I got to see the oncologist this morning, which wasn't expected. He's ready to start treatment. He wasn't any more encouraging about the condition of my liver than anyone else, but he wasn't any less either.

4. The bowel surgeon will do a colonoscopy (& biopsy) early Monday morning. Then midweek, probably Wednesday, the oncologist will look at the results of that to get a better idea of what kind of cancer it is and therefore what kind of chemo I need. He suggested in response to my question this morning that he'll also be ready at that time to give me an updated long-term prognosis, but reminded me that it won't be a crystal ball about what's definitely going to happen to me. It'll just be about the average outcome, and I may do better or worse than average. So that midweek visit will be the next chance to hear their guess about how dire my situation is.

5. After three months of chemo they'll be able to do further tests to evaluate the results. We'll get a much more informed prognosis then. That will also be our next best chance for an official confirmation that a miracle has happened and I don't have cancer anymore.

Meanwhile, I'm following the naturapath's diet, supplement and exercise regimen, which includes walking 10,000 steps per day. I presently have no symptoms whatsoever. Maybe without bowel surgery, and if the chemo at least holds the cancer where it is, I won't have any worse symptoms ever than just the chemo side-effects, and the general practitioner said side-effects from liver chemo are generally less than other chemo's.

Anyway, I feel good physically, I have reason to hope medically, I’m confident of God’s love and power to heal, and I’m surrounded and inundated by the love, prayers and fasting of people who care about me to an extraordinary degree.

God is love and love is enough.

I Have Cancer, But it Doesn't Quite Have Me

The adults in the household have spent most of this past week crying together, scrambling to make sense of anything, and going through the motions of our daily routines, relatively unconvincingly. I felt like I was working through the five stages of grief backwards, going straight to acceptance initially and then working my way back to depression. Things didn’t get any better when an appointment fell through. It was a consultation with a bowel surgeon, during which we hoped to learn something, anything, more than we already knew. We got there and were told it wasn’t this Friday, it was next Friday. We went home more defeated than ever. I went straight to bed and slept for five hours.

My only thought was of the story in the Bible about the four friends who let the cripple down through the roof to Jesus, who forgave and healed him when he saw "their" faith. God can heal me and meet my every need when all I have are the prayers of my friends and my own "groanings that cannot be uttered." I needed that assurance. Thank you all for standing in the gap.

Then things began to get at least marginally more encouraging. Karen went home from our visit to the surgeon and called the general practitioner (GP) who made the initial diagnosis. She got more detailed information from him about what’s going on and what to expect as the next few steps. The surgeon we’re seeing next Friday, the 16^th of March, will examine me and the existing test results and decide on that basis if they need a colonoscopy first or just go straight to surgery. He will also need to fill out some paperwork to try to convince our insurance company that the cancer is not a pre-existing condition, and should be covered. At the same time, the GP has sent paperwork to the main government hospital in town to try to get me in there for free if the insurance company doesn’t come through. The GP said we should have paperwork from a surgeon at the government hospital sometime in the next week about scheduling surgery there. The GP assured us the extra week from the miscommunicated appointment with the private surgeon won’t make a significant difference in my prognosis.

My friend and employer Kevin Crowther lost his father to cancer a few months ago after a long battle. He's convinced the diet and dietary supplements of a naturapath kept his father alive for years, until his father went off them, so he paid for me to see the naturapath yesterday (Saturday).

I've never been a big believer in such things myself, but I figured I'm like the old reprobate who was on his death bed. The preacher comes to his bedside and says to him: "Renounce the devil." The old man shakes his head no. The preacher puts his hand on the old reprobate's head and urges more loudly: "Renounce the devil!" The old man says weakly: "Preacher, I'm just in no condition to antagonize anybody."

So I'm saying yes to any advice that isn't mutually exclusive with the advice of medical doctors.

The naturapath is a Christian and after he spent a long time explaining what his recommended approach does and why it works, he said that three mental attitudes are also key elements in recovery: prayer, gratitude and laughter.

So since that visit, even though I'm not having a physical symptom-free day (and symptoms seem a lot more serious now that I know they're cancer and not just indigestion or acid reflux or irritable bowel syndrome), still I feel a lot better mentally just because I've added gratitude and laughter to prayer on my list of acceptable things for my mind to wander around in. And it feels better, between the further details we got on Friday and the recommendation that we're already implementing from the naturapath, to actually have a plan, a strategy, to understand what the next steps are, and to be doing something proactively instead of just laying around being a victim.

I’m eating what I’m told to eat, taking all the supplements, going for a walk after each meal as recommended, and I’m praying, laughing and being grateful.

Money is still a pretty scary thought. I don't see any way to get and do all the needed things without significant unexpected money, but we aren't quite to that day yet.

Otherwise, things are as good as can be expected until I've had surgery and then seen the oncologist after he has the surgery results. That's when it looks like I have the next chance to get an updated, more informed prognosis. So that’s our first chance to get official confirmation of a miracle.

Thank you for loving me and praying for me.

I Have Cancer

No pictures this week; only words that sound alien coming from my own mouth. I have cancer and the doctor thinks it’ll probably prove terminal. It’s weird. I celebrated my 50^th birthday 9 months ago in conscious, deliberate gratitude and celebration that “everything works and nothing hurts.” I didn’t have any of the little aches and pains that plagued my peers. Even now, at this exact moment, I have no pain or other physical symptoms of any kind.

I've been having stomach problems, just cramps or indigestion-type feelings that came and went. Antacids and so forth didn't seem to help. I went to the doctor a few days ago; he poked around on my belly and said my liver was enlarged. He immediately sent me for ultrasound, CAT scan and blood work. I went back yesterday for the follow-up to get his diagnosis.

He's just a general practitioner, rather than an oncologist, and he only spent about 30 seconds looking at the test results (he hadn't seen them until I got to his office. His diagnosis, however, was cancer of the bowel, spread to my liver. The prognosis he gave me when I asked for one was that it might take 3-5 years, but he thought the cancer would kill me.

My general lay impression has also been that liver cancer seems to be generally terminal, although not necessarily taking that long. My wife Karen looked online and found something that said that, although liver cancer is generally terminal, that's frequently because cirrhosis is also present. The oncologist might have a more optimistic prognosis. I'll certainly pursue every reasonable medical option.

In the meantime, I would appreciate your prayers. I believe in doctors and cures, but I also believe in miraculous healing. Of course, I also recognize with the three Hebrew children in the Bible that I might not be delivered, but that God will still be God and love will still be enough.

My mind has been racing these last few hours through all the genuinely miraculous healings I’ve seen in my life on one hand, and all the deaths of saints on the other hand, who prayed for healing and weren’t healed. I’ve been trying to run two directions at once, praying for peace in the midst of the storm and the grace to die the death of a saint but at the same time praying to be one of the miracles, believing in the love and power of God to heal.

And I’ve been thinking of, and talking to, all the people who love me, who hurt with me when I hurt, who feel like their lives will be enriched by my life and impoverished by my death. I find myself constantly simultaneously thinking “Thank you” and “I’m sorry”. Thank you for loving me and seeing good stuff in me and weeping with me when I weep. I need that right now. I need to know right now that my life so far has mattered. At the same time I find myself thinking I’m sorry that my prognosis causes you pain and, if it proves correct, may leave you feeling abandoned.

We have a lot of things we'd like to see God do through us over the next 20 years. I'd really like to not be done, yet.

In the New Testament, in the book of Acts, I find two interesting stories. In one, Peter was delivered from bondage and death; the church, the people who loved him, were strengthened by that outcome. In the other, Stephen was not delivered, but died a painful death; and the church, the people who loved him, were strengthened by that outcome.

I need God to be God and love to be enough for the people who love me. I’m so grateful that they are many, and that they are praying for me.