Fighting cancer and heart failure: May 2008 Archives

God bless you.
I wish God would bless each of you as well as he is blessing people like me.
Sure, all is not completely well with me. I am dealing with brain cancer, prostate cancer and end-stage congestive heart failure that may require me to have at least two serious surgeries as well as an out-patient radiation seeds implantation procedure.
But, thanks to God, on the whole, I am doing very well in my healing journey. Run down this basic checklist with me:
1. I have faith in a healing God, who is sustaining and healing me as I have been reporting to you, and I have His ultimate gift of eternal life.
2. I have a good job and good group health insurance coverage.
3. I am receiving effective treatment from skilled doctors at The University of Chicago Medical Center, Northwestern Memorial Hospital and the Chicago Prostate Cancer Center.
4, I have a beautiful wife of 39 years (Joyce), a great family and a wonderful, comfortable home.
5. I am experiencing no significant or sustained pain or discomfort.

God bless you.
As I told you in my last entry, three encouraging diagnostic updates by my doctors confirm that my healing is already underway.
First, doctors have concluded the brain tumor is benign. So Dr. Allison Hahr, Northwestern Memorial Hospital endocrinologist, has prescribed that we treat it with a pill as long as it is not growing and producing any dangerous hormones.
Second, Dr. Glenn Gerber, University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC) urologist, says the two cancerous tumors on my prostate are "early-stage and localized" and can be effectively treated with a minimal-invasive procedure where radiation seeds will be implanted in the prostate by Dr. Brian Moran, a world-renown radiation oncologist.
Third, Dr. Allen Anderson, UCMC cardiologist, examined me Friday and expressed amazement that I am feeling better and have made a "dramatic response" to new medication he has added to my treatment.
Some of your may question why I am choosing to deal with these potentially deadly health issues in public. Well, it's because from the very start I prayed and had faith that God would heal me, as He obviously is already doing, and I wanted Him to get the praise, the glory and the thanksgiving so that others would be encouraged to pray and have faith in Him whenever they are afflicted with serious sickness or whatever.

God bless you.
I started this healing journey privately, praying to God with my wife Joyce in our home as the revelations of brain cancer, end-stage congestive heart failure and prostate cancer were made in that order by doctors at Northwestern Hospital and the University of Chicago Hospital in April.
Next, I was inspired by my faith in God to audaciously make this journey a public one by inviting the world to watch God work. Before starting this blog, I accepted an invitation to preach the 82nd church anniversary revival of the Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church, 4600 South Martin Luther King Drive, on the nights on May 5, 6 and 8. Thursday night is my last night.
Of all the people that I knew would be behind me prayerfully to the victorious end, true fellow Christians would be my most loyal supporters. So I used this preaching engagement to show that I was not going to let sickness stop me from preaching God's word as I have been doing for 55 years since God called me to preach at the age of nine. When I accepted the call, I vowed to God that I would preach His gospel until I die. So as long as I have the strength to preach, I will do so as the Spirit and my health dictate, not only to fulfill my original vow but to show the world that I am a HEALING IN PROGRESS.

God bless you.

Welcome to the story of the adventure of the healing process that I am undergoing.

My blog will take you with me as I go from serious sickness to, I hope, miraculous recovery, by the grace of God and the aid of God-gifted doctors and nurses.

First, let me describe our outbound point of origin. Last month, destiny dealt me a triple dose of trauma. Doctors at the University of Chicago and Northwestern hospitals examined me over a two-week span and diagnosed three big problems:

• • Brain cancer, which might require surgery.

• • End-stage congestive heart failure, which definitely requires a heart transplant.

• • Prostate cancer, which also definitely requires surgery.

Any one of these diagnoses is enough to drape a man with doom and gloom. But the Lord has seen fit to visit me with all three.

I am a 64-year-old black man, a Sun-Times reporter for 35 years, a Baptist preacher for 55 years.

I have a family history of congestive heart failure, which killed my oldest and youngest siblings, my father and an aunt, and of prostate cancer, which killed three uncles.

Now, it's my turn to tangle with both of those terrors, and brain cancer, too.

Each diagnosis hit me like a proverbial ton of bricks, drove me to my knees in prayer, made me tell my wife and children, to their despair, and motivated me to surf the Internet and question doctors to see what information they could share.

Many doctors prefer that their patients be simple, silent and totally surrendered to whatsoever they suggest.

But it's my life at stake. I already underwent a cardiac triple-bypass in 2001 -- when I was sawed open, had three ribs broken and had a plastic surgeon fail to stabilize my sternum, or breast bone, with experimental titanium plates. The latter required me to undergo a subsequent serious surgery three months later to have the plates replaced with the standard steel sutures.

Since then, I have been determined to make sure I communicate more closely with my doctors, ask as many questions as possible, talk to as many patients as possible and get as much published information as possible to enable me to know exactly what it is that doctors say I have, what options are available, how they compare in effecting a cure -- and how much time do I have for ME to make the decision as to what will be done.

In other words, I have promoted myself to being CEO, as best I can, of my medical dream team, where, first and foremost, God is my primary-care physician.

I invite your feedback after each posting. I am most eager to hear from people who have recovered from similar medical issues, or are still dealing with them, or are caregivers for someone else who has dealt with them.

I cordially invite you all to watch God heal me.

Right now, I actually feel good. I take 10 different pills a day, run at least a mile on my treadmill, eat responsibly, don't do anything strenuous and get plenty of prayer and rest as I also schedule the surgeries that I feel are in my best interests -- unless God postpones them with a cataclysmic healing.

It's going to be one of the strangest, most exciting and -- I hope -- enlightening tales you'll ever read.