Friday 1 December 2017

Bold Prayer and Almighty God

Yesterday morning, my Dad, my Mom and I met with the oncologist at the Cross Cancer Institute.  We were expecting that our discussion would focus around the chemo options for my Dad going forward.  When the oncologist had told us that the tumour was growing at our last meeting, he had also said that my Dad would need to switch to a new chemo because the chemo he was currently on obviously wasn't working.

So the three of us were shocked yesterday to hear that there was definitely something killing cancer cells!  The oncologist told us that the pathologist had to analyze my Dad's results twice because they were so irregular.  When the oncologist, pathologist, and surgeon had gotten together yesterday morning, they couldn't believe how unusual my Dad's tumour was - in a good way!  These types of tumours are notoriously hard to beat because the cancer cells aren't very sensitive to treatment, so we were surprised to hear that 50% of the tumour that they removed was made-up of dead cancer cells!  This means that some combination of chemo, ketogenic diet, and other natural supplements, in conjunction with everyone’s prayers, is working!  God has been putting all of these different options to work and they have been doing their jobs!  The oncologist wants my Dad to keep taking the same chemo for the time being but instead of taking it for 5 days in a row every 28-day period, he will take a smaller dose everyday.  My Dad has been tolerating this chemo well so we pray that he continues to respond and tolerate it well when he is now going to get a daily dose.

The oncologist also told us that they can't be sure if the cancer cells that were still alive are residual cells left from his first surgery or if the cancer is growing.  But when we heard that the surgeon was very confident in this surgery (our oncologist told us that if the surgeon was the bragging-type, he would definitely be bragging), it gave us more hope that all of the cancer cells were removed this time and that going forward, the treatment can prevent cancer growth instead of killing off the remaining cancer cells.

It was an awesome day with a HUGE answer to prayer.  A couple of weeks ago, my Dad said that he was praying that the surgeons would open him up and find no evidence of cancer.  We started to pray for the same thing, knowing that God can perform miracles but also realizing that this was a bold plea.  So to hear that 50% of this treatment-resistant tumour was dead cancer cells?  MIRACLE!  God's touch is evident in every area of my Dad's treatment thus far and to have such a loud answer to such a bold prayer is amazing.

- Tara