Today is a very special day for me, because today is the last day of my chemo treatments.
Yippee!
Six weeks of daily headaches, nausea, and painful lesions will soon be a thing of the distant past. I will visit Moffitt Cancer treatment center in a few days for what will hopefully be my final checkup, (until next time), and it will have ended.
A friend was reminding me the other day of all the junk I have gone through in the last couple of years and it is mind blowing. It began one day when I was unbridling my horse Dusty, (who I thought was my friend). My spirited steed got mad at two other horses who were crowding around him. Precipitously he lifted his head up, put his ears back, glared at me with wild angry eyes, and I knew I was in trouble. My wife looked on in horror as he took off running, knocking me approximately 10 feet through the air where I landed on my head and neck and then for good measure he happily planted his nasty hoof directly on my chest as he and the other two horses galloped over me. I was knocked unconscious momentarily, but survived with nothing more than a bruised sternum and minor concussion.
Next I was bitten by a large 5-foot long Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake. Fortunately my boots protected me from an injection of poison; however, when removing them I somehow got venom on my hands and accidentally rubbed my eyes and ended up in the emergency room getting a shot of adrenaline for hives and eventually all the skin peeled off around my eyes in the area I had rubbed, which made me look like a raccoon for a few weeks.
My next dilemma was my gall bladder needing to be removed and though it was supposed to be a relatively minor thing, inexplicably I ended up in the hospital for two weeks due to complications. Not long after recovering from that ordeal, I had major surgery performed on the cervical section of my spine to fuse five discs in my neck together and secure them with metal plates, (3 discs were ruptured and 2 bulging.)
I spent 3 months flat on my back racked with unbelievable, agonizing pain with that malady, and before I could fully recover, my wife was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer that required surgery, 12 weeks of chemo, and 6 weeks of radiation coupled with blood clots that became pulmonary embolisms blocking all 4 quadrants of her lungs which required emergency surgery to save her life.
But wait there is more. Most patients endure 2-3 side effects of the 12 associated with her chemo regiment. She suffered all 12 and was totally helpless and in the fetal position racked with pain for 3 long months, which meant I had to do all the grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, et al. and at that particular time I wasn’t feeling like running a marathon.
How about this for timing, the precise day she began her 6 weeks of radiation treatments I was diagnosed with stage 3-4 Hepatitis C and had to go on chemo myself for 12 weeks. Like her I suffered every side effect associated with it for 12 long weeks although I was not bed-ridden.
Finally, I finished with my chemo and then just a few months later was diagnosed with a dangerous melanoma on my back that required surgery followed by preventative chemo for 6 weeks.
Which brings me to my current situation. Saturday my car was totaled in a dangerous car crash on I 75 and I consider myself very lucky to be sitting here right now and not in a morgue with a tag on my toe, or in a hospital in critical condition.
My goodness I think I need a vacation . . . LOL
Seriously as I think of the past few years of my life I cannot help but remember the early years which were far worse where I survived 2 head-on collisions, 3 cars that turned over multiple times, a motorcycle wreck, fights, guns, knives, clubs, drug overdoses, and so on and I wonder:
Why I am still alive?
Hmmm . . . One day God will sit me down and tell me. Until then I can only surmise that He is keeping me around because His purpose for creating me has yet to be fulfilled. We are not born randomly. We are born because God has a purpose for our lives. Personally, I believe Satan has tried repeatedly to take me out, but it is impossible for him to kill me until and unless God allows it. I don’t ever worry about death, because I consider myself indestructible until God calls me home. Until then I intend to keep trying to glorify Him and praise Him through the hard times and the good times. I try not to dwell on hard times because I’ve had so many good times plus my trials pale in comparison to Paul and the disciples, not to mention my brothers and sisters in Christ who suffer so much persecution in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. They are being murdered, tortured, raped, boiled alive in oil, and suffering slavery as I write these words in my comfortable office.
Hey we don’t have it so bad. We need some PURE JOY this morning! Rejoice – Rejoice Jesus is ALIVE!
James 1:2
Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you encounter trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance . . .
February 7 2017 – Click here to listen