Life with cancer – from patience to trust and hope

Life with cancer – from patience to trust and hope. I knew it was going to happen. The only question was when. After prostate removal, the biopsy showed my cancer was more aggressive than previous biopsies indicated. It also showed more cancer than what was expected. Finally, it also showed what’s known as cancer cells on both margins. That means there were cancer cells on both ends of what was removed. With all that, the chances of total removal were pretty much zero. And so, it was a question of waiting for what was nearly inevitable. The inevitable happened.

After the surgery, PSA numbers dropped quickly. It wasn’t long before it was 0.008. That’s undetectable where I’m going. Not that there’s no cancer. But if there is any, they can’t see it.

In that waiting period, it’s a combination of patience and hope. Patience, waiting to see if the number goes up or not. And hope that it won’t.

As a Christian, of course, there was prayer. We read about all the healing in the Bible. Several years ago I wrote The Problem of “Does God still heal”? (or Not). It’s an older format and kind of needs to be redone, but the message is still there, regardless of how it looks.

You may remember, in the Bible Jesus healed everyone. There’s a really good book, titled And He healed them all, by Jeffrey McClain Jones. There are several books with similar titles. This one’s a novel and it’s quite good.

In any case, one of the problems with some Christians is that they expect God to heal everyone. And if you weren’t healed, it was because you didn’t have enough faith. There’s really no basis for that belief. And yet, the idea persists in some churches.