Radial What?

DISAPPOINTINGLY, results from the trial I completed in March 2003 would prove inconclusive. I remained a candidate for the second trial, but during the five long months that I waited for that trial to be approved by both the FDA and the hospital board, the lower of the two tumors began to misbehave. Painfully.

ANOTHER CANCER “ADVENTURE” was on my dance card, and so, in late June 2003 I began a course of Novalis shaped beam surgery. Radial beam surgery. High energy radiation. All names for the new kid on the radiation block. It had an incredible record of remission for various forms of cancer, but almost no history with melanoma.

ONCE AGAIN, I, WHO HAD always had an aversion to finding new frontiers, would try something few had tried before. Six times I was arranged on a glass table and fired upon by the arm of the Novalis body machine. The pain the tumor caused stopped for several days, and then returned to become my constant companion.

ON HALLOWEEN the radiologist who had assisted with the Novalis treatment told me that it had not been effective. My tumor was still evident. He was very sorry.

HE WAS SORRY, but I was devastated. Another door had slammed shut. That left the second trial, and I prayed that the FDA would approve it and that the hospital would find the funding.

SIX WEEKS later they did.

EACH PARTICIPANT was thoroughly tested and scanned for a baseline. When the results came back, I was told that the radiated tumor no longer appeared on the scan. The Novalis had worked after all! I couldn’t believe it. It was the first good news Tom and I had had in eighteen months.

THERE WAS MORE, however, and it wasn’t good. A new area appeared showed signs of cancer. It was spreading. Was this the news that announced the beginning of the end? Was this the first inkling that the cancer was going to take over my body? Was it going to win?

MY HUSBAND REMINDED me that this kind of thinking wouldn’t take us where we needed to go, and I made a decision to take the good news to heart and not let the new tumor tarnish it. After all, we laughed, two tumors were gone. What did it matter that two were yet to go? I hadn’t lost any ground.

THAT DAY I also decided to think of this disease as a search-and-destroy mission that would remain a constant, though unwanted, companion in my life. Setting my goal on a cure and crashing down with each setback would be too hard on me and the people who loved me. Any advances the cancer might make couldn’t be allowed to determine whether I was having a good day or not. I didn’t have the luxury of bad days. Period. I simply couldn’t allow myself to get discouraged. I had to remain hopeful, and I began to read the best source about hope I knew of, the Bible.

IN ROMANS 5:3-5, I found the answer. “. . . suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit . . .”

THERE IT WAS, in terms simple enough even for me. Suffering→ endurance→ character→ hope.

I HAD BEEN LOOKING at my circumstances all wrong. Suffering wasn’t the beginning of the end as I feared, I had simply made the first step toward hope.

You’re blessed. Be a blessing!