My dad has an appointment at the Mayo Clinic tomorrow for a CT scan. For those who don’t know or who haven’t read my earliest posts, my dad was diagnosed with colon cancer close to 5 years ago. He took chemotherapy, had surgery to cut out the tumor and got the all clear from the doctor after six months. Or a year. Either way, things were supposed to be okay. The cancer was gone, and we could all breathe a little easier. I’ve got to learn not to be so sure about things because I usually turn out to be wrong.

A little over a year ago, my dad started suffering from recurring back pain that left him practically bed-ridden. He went to the chiropractor, who is also a family friend, and it was suggested he might have a degenerative spine. Not a surprising diagnosis. After a doctor’s visit and a recommendation from his physician, he had a few cortisone shots in his back. It was a very difficult thing for him to do; wouldn’t we all be terrified of someone jamming a needle into our spine?

Unfortunately, the cortisone shots only seemed to last for a day or so. They weren’t really helping. We knew something was wrong, but we never suspected that the cancer might have come back. It wasn’t until there was blood in his stool (sorry, no nicer way to say it) that he went in for a prostate exam.

I was at work when I got the call. The results came back positive for cancer.

After excusing myself to my coworker, I went to the back room and bawled my eyes out. My coworker came back to check on me and offered to work the rest of the closing shift alone. It was a Friday night, so even though I got this terrible news, I was adamant that I would close with her if I needed to. Long story short, she convinced me to just go home to be with my family. There were the usual tears and hugs when a medical disaster hits one’s family. We prayed together and agreed to hope for the best. God had helped my dad beat cancer before, and He could do it again.

And then the news got worse.

The prognosis came in that even with chemotherapy and radiation, there was only a 20-30% chance of remission. I had to ask several times what that meant. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. What did the doctor mean by that?

What it meant was that there was a 70-80% chance the chemotherapy and radiation wouldn’t work. There was a 70-80% chance that this cancer would take my dad from me. I wasn’t ready for this. I wasn’t at all ready. They say God never gives you more than you can handle, but I couldn’t handle this. If I lost my dad, I would break. I would shatter. My depression and anxiety would destroy me as I sunk into the deepest pit of sorrow and loss, sucking me up like quicksand. I questioned God and why he would do this to me, to my dad, and to my family. Hadn’t we suffered enough the last time?

For reasons I can’t yet explain to you here, I wondered if this was some sort of punishment from God to make him wake up and smell the [expletive] he was shoveling. Yes, I had that awful thought. There was a part of me that hoped he would “learn his lesson” and… well, it’s a story for another time. Needless to say, that black thought hung around for months afterward, wondering why I would ever sink that low and think that of my dad’s illness. I often have these black thoughts. They pop into my head like my brain is a whack-a-mole game. I have to constantly smash them down, but they just pop up again. I’m still figuring out how to keep the monster in my head at bay.

So my dad started chemotherapy despite the odds being against him. We spread the word of his diagnosis and asked for prayer from every soul we knew. After several chemotherapy treatments were administered, it was time to do a CT scan at the Mayo Clinic to see if any progress had been made. We didn’t expect much, but we hoped. Prayer can be a powerful thing.

80% reduction. We couldn’t believe it. 80. Friggin’. Percent. We had been told that there was close to an 80% chance that nothing would happen, or that things would just get worse. If you don’t believe in God, let me tell you: He exists. He has to, because that’s the only way this cancer could have done a 180. Even the doctor couldn’t make sense of it. We didn’t try to make sense of it; we knew exactly what happened. God had helped to heal my dad, not all the way, but He gave him much better odds. I don’t blame God for not healing him completely. We’d already had that miracle happen with my grandpa, who had a incurable cancer, where the cancer just disappeared from his body. For whatever reason, God had allowed some of the cancer to remain in my dad’s body. I wasn’t angry. I was just happy that there’d been that much of a reduction. It was a miracle whether it was 80% or 100%.

Another round of chemotherapy and radiation treatments, and my dad was off to the Mayo Clinic for a CT scan to see the results. This was two months ago, and it was right after he finished his radiation treatments, so the results weren’t final. Although the scan showed no signs of cancer, inflammation from the radiation made it impossible for the doctor to be absolutely sure. The inflammation shows up in the scan and basically covers everything else so that you can’t see for sure what else is there. It’s kind of like the inflammation is photobombing the CT scan, and it won’t get its big, fat head out of the way.

So, here we are. Two months later. Time for the real deal. I’m not sure whether I’m nervous or numb. I might be both. All I know is, tomorrow is going to determine how my family’s lives are going to be from here on out. It’s an odd feeling knowing there will be such a huge impact on your life by a few simple words from a doctor. I don’t know what I’ll do or say when we get the results. It’ll be the first time I get to hear the results in real time. It’s been a phone call, text, or I hear about it when I get home in the past.

I’ll be gone for a couple days, but I’m going to bring my computer with me just in case I get the chance to blog while I’m there. I’ll be staying with my aunt and uncle, and they have Wifi, so I might get a couple entries done when I’m not spending time with them or at the Mayo Clinic.

Please pray for my dad. You may not know him, and you may not know me, but I ask for your prayers and well wishes anyway. I’ll try and post the results as soon as I can.