You’re not my doctor

Neither of the doctors gave us hope.  Jim recommended that we get a second opinion, “Let’s see what Mayo has to say”. Who knows what I would have done without Jim’s mental clarity?  I wasn’t in my right mind these days.  It sounds like the line from the Cool Hand Luke movie with Paul Neuman as Luke, “You gotta get your mind right Luke…”. 

Jim was starting to talk about Mayo.  And then, we heard from our guitarist about a friend of his that went to Mayo with Stage 4 pancreas cancer.  He was alive and well two years later.  That in itself sounded like a good prognosis after hearing I should get my affairs in order.  Jim reasoned that the drive to Mayo was only a couple of hours from our house.  So, we continued to walk the path of this journey by taking the next step, which was to get a stent inserted in my blocked bile duct and have a biopsy performed on the tumor so that pathology could test it to determine if it was truly cancerous. 

Pancreas cancer, or pancreatic adenocarcinoma, is one of the deadliest cancers. Do a quick search online and you will find bad news.  Most of what you read is that even with aggressive treatment, the prognosis is poor. Various things stack the odds against successful pancreatic cancer treatment.  In one article Jim read that the survival rate was under 9 percent.  My tumor was found to be that type of cancer.  I wept.  However, I was determined to beat this.  I knew I could not read the facts about this deadly disease.  I didn’t read anything about statistics until after I was pronounced cancer free.  I needed to hold onto and believe that God is the healer of all diseases, He perfects that which concerns me and that with Him I would overcome.  And that is what I did with the help support of many people and God.