Still Waiting

-by Terri Fornear

This is the 3rd in a series of excerpts from Terri Fornear’s new book, Abiding Through the Shadows, A Caretaker’s Struggle with God’s Goodness.

Joe’s diagnosis changed three times, ending with metastatic melanoma. I mention metastatic, because people would tell me they once had melanoma —a skin spot removed. Yet Joe never even had a spot on his skin. It went directly to his lymph nodes, so it was metastatic because it spread past the skin. This was one of those unanswerable questions we kept asking. How could he catch it in time if he never had a skin lesion?

Waiting for the name of the cancer was the first obstacle over which I became very anxious. It seemed to me the sooner we knew the sooner we could stop it. Yet the timing was so out of our hands. The passing of so much time felt like a death sentence.

Joe needed a second surgery to remove the remainder of the lymph nodes under his arm. He was scheduled to have surgery the following week. Hopefully, we would then be free of this monster. After his surgery, the doctor took me into the little room again to tell me some good news and some bad news. First, he felt he got all of the remainder of the cancer under Joe’s arm. But the results of a new PET scan and biopsy showed a cancer lesion in his stomach. The melanoma was either spreading quickly, or they had found the source of the cancer—the primary—in his stomach.

We had been hoping for a different kind of cancer than melanoma. After researching stomach cancer on the internet, we found there was a low side effect pill which had a great record of stopping it. I am not sure I was reading all the right information, but one thing was clear—stomach cancer had way better statistics than melanoma. If this was Stage IV melanoma, there was only a six percent chance of any treatment working.

Our family was already dealing with metastatic melanoma. In fact Joe’s dad, who lived far from Dallas in Pittsburgh, had just been diagnosed with Stage IV melanoma and given a few months. He was getting worse and Joe wanted to go see him. We had been planning to go at Christmas, however, our uninvited visitor would not allow us to leave.

Mind Renewal
Lie: Understanding what is happening in my life will give me the power to control it. Knowledge can make everything bad go away!
Truth: Proverbs 3:5-7: Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes.

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*Terri Fornear has published her caretaker side of the story of the Fornear cancer battle. Abiding Through the Shadows, A Caretaker’s Struggle with God’s Goodness, is not about her courage and strength, but rather how God met her at her weakest points. She pulls back the curtain to transparently reveal her false concepts of God, which created extra turbulence during that hard time. She shares how the Lord graciously and gently walked her through it all, setting her free from lies about Him.

If you are, or have been, a caretaker of a cancer patient or someone who is in crisis, we believe you will benefit from this book! Stronghold Ministry has joined with Terri and I to offer this book to you free. Simply reply to this email with your full name and address and we’ll send it to you. If you insist, you can make a donation to Stronghold Ministry here. Or you can purchase the book here.

We invite you to acquire this book and abide in our tremendously good God together with Terri.