Note: This is Part Two of probably a three-part story. You can read Part One here, and the book that started it all here. Not long before we headed up to Seattle, my wife, Sarah and her mother, Pam, organized an emergency family meeting. Our whole lives were about to turn upside down, so they figured we should get everyone …
The Seattle Journal
At the beginning of 2014 I was diagnosed with stage four Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Near the end of January I started chemo therapy, and four months later the cancer was completely gone. However, about four months after that it was back. And that’s where this story begins. (To read more about those initial months, though, be sure to check out my …
Prayer Page Update 5
Here we are with another update to the prayer page. First off, we have a new friend to pray for. Larry Stefano has dealt with cancer before, but he has just been informed that there is a new spot on his hip. It is either bladder cancer or prostate cancer. If it is prostate cancer, he could have 8+ more …
A Wonderful World
Sometimes it’s easy to forget how beautiful the world around us is. In fact, many of us have. We are often so consumed with hate one for another, or fear for the future, or stress about work and family and life. We are so overwhelmed with the tragic, grungy particulars screaming for our attention that we completely miss the gorgeous, …
Behind Our Masks
You walk into the party. The lights are low and dusky, but you can still easily see them: your fellow party-goers. They mill about, talking, laughing, and you join them. You’ve spent so much time with them that you know them by name at this point. They’re your friends. Your family. And they are all wearing their masks. Some of …
Prayer Page Update 4
There are some incredibly awesome highs and very low lows in today’s update. So, if this post feels a bit like a roller coaster, my apologies. In the last prayer page update we met Terri Carrell. At that point she was lined up to have a highly invasive surgery that would remove her whole left lung, take a very long …
Going Home
World-weary and travel-worn, we turned our dusty black sedan down the long gravel driveway. At the end ahead of us, waiting, was an old, Swiss-style house, all peaks and doors and sweeping curves and decks. Parking on the slab of concrete, we turned off the car and climbed into the dusky air. One of the two French double doors opened …
In Our Ruins
When I was very young, my grandfather died in a car accident. Well, that’s not entirely true. He actually survived the car accident. But he did not survive the medical care that followed. There was some talk, to my understanding, that there were grounds for a medical malpractice suit. However, I know for a fact there was a great deal …
We Are Reborn
“This must be what it feels like when you begin to die.” That thought hit me one day when I was sitting alone in my room in the hospital. It wasn’t a melancholy thought: it wasn’t despairing. It was more of a stop-breathing, “whoa” moment. Because it was true. I had just finished a week-long stint of a lethal chemo …