It was May 15, and I had an appointment to see my doctor. Nothing serious, really... it was a checkup to make sure the blood pressure medicine he had prescribed for me was working well, and because I had been checking it daily, I knew it was. There was also something I had forgotten to mention to him at my last visit, several months before, but I did remember it this time. I told him had been having a little bit of trouble swallowing when I ate too fast. I could eat just fine - I just needed to slow down and chew and not suck down my meal like a starving wolf who just caught a rabbit. He recommended that I go to a GI specialist and get scoped, so he gave me a referral and everything got set up.
Three weeks later I woke up from the scope procedure and my wife was in the room. This was unusual, because usually they just tell the person you came with to come pick you up at the door and they wheel you out to your car in a wheelchair so you don't fall down from the sedation. We figured there must be something important they wanted to tell us.
And we knew we had guessed right when the doctor himself walked in. He very professionally and gently told us that he had found an obstruction that looked to him like cancer, and he had taken a biopsy to send to the lab. We would hear back soon. And we certainly did hear back - it definitely was cancerous. The procedure was on a Thursday, and the next Tuesday I was in a CT scan machine, finding out how good I was at lying still while the bed moved underneath me!
Two and a half years before, my wife had had surgery after a long process of chemotherapy and radiation, and her cancer has been gone ever since then. We were looking forward to a day in the near future that we wouldn't have to see the inside of the cancer treatment center again... now it was looking like that day might be further in the future than we thought. The GI doctor had referred us to the same oncologist who had treated my wife; we were pretty excited, because he's a terrific doctor and we were really happy with the care he and his team had given her! The first time he walked into the room and she was sitting in the visitor chair and I was sitting on the exam bed, he did a double take. I told him "We aren't glad to NEED you, but we are sure glad to GET you!" He talked is through what he knew so far, prayed with us (doctors who pray are awesome!), and set me up for what felt like a million scans and tests and appointments (it was probably more like 5-6 in about a two week period). It was a pain the neck just to remember where to show up and when, but we made it!
Meanwhile, we started to tell a few people what was going on. The Sunday after we found out about it but before I even had my CT scans, we got to church and my wife chose a seat away from where we usually sit. When we sat down we noticed that we were sitting in front of an older couple that we've become friends with over the past year or so. As the service went on, I started to feel like I wanted to ask them to pray for us after the service, so when it ended, I said, "Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?" I knew they would pray for us, but what I didn't know is that God had brought us together that day for a reason. I had my test on Tuesday, but it turns out that the husband also had a medical test on Tuesday (not for cancer)! So we prayed for each other that Sunday! Their outcome was very positive - mine not as immediately positive as theirs, but to me it was clearly God saying, I'm going to make things happen for you through this!
To be continued...
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