Facing the facts

It’s been three weeks of both good times and nervous waiting for us all. Having friends to visit and to stay has been great and it was a privilege for Catherine and me to visit Belmont Chapel and Isca Church, both in Exeter, over a couple of Sundays and share our story. It’s reminded us again that in so many of our weaknesses and painful thorny experiences, God’s hand can be seen and strength can be found which both encourages us and others around as they hear about it and see it, even through our occasional tears and as yet unanswered questions.

It’s over a week now since Catherine and I travelled up to Taunton for what is the latest and newest type of scan, one I’d not had before. The Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan, identical in appearance to an MRI scanner, uses a radioactive tracer injected into the body to look for disease and shows how organs and tissues are working. Basically, when it comes to cancer, where there’s a tumour, it will glow.

The results came back late last week. I glowed in more than a few places. Thankfully there wasn’t any evidence of cancer on any major organs apart from the original tumour on my lung and a tiny one on the liver which is reckoned to be the harmless hemangioma seen on a previous CT scan. Briefly described, there are a whole lot of small tumours in various places (click on the report alongside to see where). The most troublesome of them, the (now large) one under my chin, giving the appearance of a huge ‘adam’s apple’ or even second chin; the enlarging one under my left arm and then multiple lesions/tumours on my right upper thigh – particularly as they’re pushing through the surface and feel like a small pear lying on its side.

The great relief for us all was the absence of any sign of anything in my brain. We’d been concerned as I’ve been experiencing some ‘fuzzy’ heads and low level, persistent headaches over the past few weeks. Maybe its just a man, mid-life thing instead. 

The consultant radiologist’s report concluded,

‘Multiple nodal and subcutaneous sites of metastatic disease. Single tiny inter-muscular deposit. Tiny avid focus within the liver could also represent a metastatic deposit and can be followed up on subsequent imaging. Comparison with the diagnostic CT demonstrates progression.’

It has confirmed that the cancer is indeed on the move again, and has also given my medical team at Exeter the absolute low-down on all the ‘where’s and what’s’.

Hearing the results from my ever-reassuring medical journeying companion, Dr Ayman Nassar, oncology registrar in Exeter, he was fairly relaxed about it all. Yes, there’s disease progression, but it’s not developing and appearing anywhere especially serious. Next step? I’m starting on the new pembolizumab on Friday 5th February, and will have it pumped into my veins every three weeks for the foreseeable future…or at least until they can see that it’s having either no effect or until the tumours shrink to vanishing. It’s a drug producing some startling effects in advanced melanoma treatment. I know I’m in the right place as the drug was licensed in the UK for first line use in late 2015 and the NHS provides it at no cost. In NZ, with one of the greatest instances of melanoma in the world, Pharmac NZ has thus far refused to license it. I find that both curious and startling.    

I’m doing reasonably OK, although the multiple tumours around my shoulder and neck area sometimes feel, perhaps more psychologically, like my neck is being corralled in. Family wise, we’re all doing ‘ok-ish’ although these last two weeks have brought to the surface lots of old concerns, ones with which we became familiar in the early days of my diagnosis. As I see Catherine and the children hold their breath, wondering what the news will be about me with new cancer developments (but this time now with the pain of Ben’s death on top of it), I find myself engaged in a fresh and more intense dialogue with God. Encouraged by Abraham’s careful, yet bold exchange with God over the city of Sodom,

“What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away….Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?’

‘If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake’, God says.

Encouraged, Abraham went on. What about for the sake of forty five? Yes. Forty? Yes. Thirty, twenty, ten? Yes. 

And then King Hezekiah in 2 Kings 20, when in the face of his predicted death, cries out in prayer and weeping. God responds with fifteen years. Abraham and Hezekiah have further encouraged me in my ongoing prayer life, especially with Catherine, me and the children already going through one dark valley, to pray that it won’t be another. But who can say where it will lead? My situation is not Abraham’s, not Hezekiah’s. I’m simply encouraged that Father sees the bigger picture I don’t see and that the words of Abraham are ones which encourage me to dialogue and engage with Him, sometimes with a tearful passion. But I find myself ultimately resting on Abraham’s words…

“Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?’”

Co-incidentally (or perhaps not), on the morning of my scan results, one of my Bible-in-a-Year readings was the account of Jesus walking on the water out to his friends struggling away on the Sea of Galilee, buffeted by the wind in their small boat. It’s one of those accounts you’ve got to say sounds pretty fanciful and unlikely…unless it really happened. The gospel writers would surely hardly want to discredit their accounts by including things that would cause people to laugh and walk off in disbelief unless there was truth to it. And the reason for the events like this and their subsequent inclusion in the gospels is often to address three questions…‘Who is this man?’ – his identity – ‘Why has he come?’ – his mission –  and ‘What is he asking of us in response?’ – his call. 

And so, especially for a first century Jew hearing this account, it’d probably take them immediately to the Old Testament book of Job where there’s a description of God…

“He alone spreads out the heavens and walks upon the waves of the sea”. (Job 9:8)

So the real identity being suggested for the one walking on the waters here in front of the disciples? God.   

The call was immediately plain. It was so relevant for me that morning waiting for the scan results. It’s seen in disciple Peter’s response to seeing Jesus…

“Lord, if it’s you, tell me to come to you on the water.’

Peter gets out of the boat and, focusing on Christ, also does it. But then something happens. He begins to fix on the wind, the waves…and starts to sink.

Just at that moment as I was reading, I sensed something for me that morning. Here was an aspect of “the call”. Effectively, “Jeremy, because I’m God, will you trust me again today for your life, despite what you hear at the hospital? Will you trust me? Fix on me, no matter what, and you won’t sink beneath the waves. You’ll be steady. You’ll be secure”.

As he reached out and saved Peter from the waves that day, so there are hints at Jesus’ mission – why he came. Ultimately, not to be just a good teacher showing us how to live, or just a healer and not be be some kind of generic light bearer or yet another special guru. Unique above all others, he came as God to seek and save us, not from waves and a watery grave, but from something far more serious.   

As I think about it all, I’m taken to C S Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” and the question that young Susan asked about Aslan the lion, Lewis’ allegory for Christ…

“Aslan is a lion – the Lion, the great Lion.”

 “Ooh” said Susan. “I’d thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion”

“Safe?” said Mr Beaver. “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

Lewis puts it well.

In the middle of my low days and good days, through the days when I need more bed rest than before, when my body is struggling with the effects of the fresh advances of the melanoma, I’m remembering the strong God who appeared in history, who was seen, was touched, who stood in our shoes, who walked our walk, who died in my place and who rose, vindicating all he’d said and done. The always good God whose ways I don’t always understand, but who won’t fail me. The One who walked on the waters.

I’m assured once again that the best is yet to come.