Category Archives: God’s timing

New News

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I had a friend from Hawaii message me looking for an update and when I responded, he said, “Thank God, I was worried for a minute there.”
I understand that. No news isn’t always good news, so here’s some news. When Ann Sophie, Will and I first arrived in Minnesota and got going with the Mayo thing, we had appointments almost every weekday, and usually a few. I was at the clinic Monday thru Friday and worried if I would need them when they were closed over the weekend. If it was outside office hours, I’d go to the ER.
These days, the appointments are much less, the next one a scan on Sept.21. But it’s a big one. When you are in chemotherapy, you might feel better and hope things are going better on your insides, but you really can’t be sure until someone looks in there and tells you for sure. This CT scan is where we find out how the meds have been working. If you remember, I’m taking a couple chemo pills that are hopefully reducing and eventually eliminating the Cancer that almost killed me a short while ago. They are part of a “targeted therapy” taking the place of the standard chemo I started out with. If this works like we are hoping and praying for, I could at some point be cancer free!
Sept.21 is when we find out just exactly how it’s been going.
As for me, I am doing much better symptom-wise. The swelling in my legs, feet, stomach, and back has all but disappeared which is awesome for me. The fluid drain I had in both lungs has decreased significantly. The right one stopped flowing completely and was removed. The left one still produces about 150ml each night. But that’s way less than before when it was at 750ml.

One of the ways you tell how well treatment is working is to look at the symptoms. Less fluid means less reaction to Cancer, so we hope for the best. The only unknown is steady pain in my neck. This appeared about a month ago and we have not been able to get a hold of it or find out a reason for it. The docs have theories that it could be Cancer in my spine, which from an MRI scan 2 weeks ago, is still present-no bigger, no smaller. Is the pain coming from this? If so, they’ll do radiation treatment. I really would rather not have this and hope that’s not the case, but it’s possible. To me, it feels more like a sore neck you slept on wrong.
Ever since this ordeal started, I’ve been taking a medicine cabinet full of drugs, so these could be reacting to each other or maybe a side effect from one or more of them. Ibuprofen helps with the pain and morphine doesn’t, interestingly enough. We hope for good news on the 21st! Anyway, that’s it for now. Thank you for your prayers and support.

Cancer–Plus and Minus

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Fighting cancer can be a full time job, and it’s not just the many doctor appointments and tests. It’s also the drain of committing to battle the disease. A cancer patient can fight and fight some more, yet still lose ground. Determining to continue, then, can wear a person down till there’s no fight left.

Nelson has had his highs and lows during his war against lung cancer and was pulled into another low just yesterday. Without an end-date to the cancer, it can seem like it’ll go on forever.

He and Ann Sophie were tempted to cancel a doctor appointment with a new oncologist yesterday afternoon, hoping to take a little time away from thinking about cancer, but the staff persuaded them to attend.

As it turned out, it was God’s rescue from the low. Ann Sophie said, “The doctor was very positive and filled us with hope.” He told them that Nelson had lots of reasons to be stressed but that he was handling it well, better than most in his position. This was uplifting to hear.

Ann Sophie said the doctor looked a lot like Santa Claus and made her wish they could stay and have him read stories to them all afternoon. Looking back on the day, it was clear that just when they’d needed a strong boost, God brought Dr. Santa Claus into their day.

It turned out that Nelson’s albumin level was extremely low, causing him to feel worse than usual. The doctor recommended he take in as much protein as he can eat or drink, and then as time passes, his levels will slowly rise, making him feel much better.

Dr. Santa also schooled them in how to take the first immunotherapy drugs, which Nelson did last night. The two pills, which had arrived via FedEx (one needing refrigeration) were to be taken exactly 12 hours apart, two hours after eating. So Ann Sophie went to work on making a chart to help keep things well regulated. What a blessing she is!

Dr. Santa said Nelson should be feeling a little better even at the end of the first week—more encouraging news. And it’s no small gift that the nausea of chemotherapy is now in the rear view mirror. Nelson takes no anti-nausea meds now, after having needed them daily. This, indeed, is progress!

“Better is the end of a thing than its beginning.” (Ecclesiastes 7:9)

My Friend Nel

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Growing up, I (Hans) viewed my eldest brother, Nel, as the biggest of my big brothers. We were nine years apart.

From my childlike vantage point he was an august and likable personality, though also somewhat distant and unpredictable. However, in time, I would go on to develop an enduring bond of friendship with Nel, a friendship that has proved to be one of the most formative relationships of my life.  

It happened that, after I had graduated high-school, I moved down south to study at Belmont University, which is located in Nashville Tennessee, a place where Nel lived at the time. It didn’t take long before, in addition to my studies, I was employed in Nel’s lawncare business on the weekends to earn some extra cash.

(L. to R. Nels, Hans, Lars, Klaus)

It was in this context – living far from my childhood home for the first time – mowing grass, sharing meals, telling stories, mowing grass, drinking coffee, listening to and talking about music together, and mowing yet more grass, that my friendship with Nel was sealed. In addition to working well alongside one another, we went on boating adventures, road trips, we camped, and generally held court in all sorts of places together, animatedly discoursing about all sorts of subjects with mutual delight.  

Nel and I have quite different personalities. He is naturally intrepid, practically minded, with an aptitude for logistics, and restless for motion. I am naturally more contemplative, a reader, cautious, imaginatively minded rather than pragmatic. However, we do share our family upbringing and a common Christian faith.

Also, we both were born with minds that just about never stop thinking and we process externally, having the habit of ‘test-driving’ our thoughts and feelings aloud in the process of working out what we believe and how we should live. Apparently, a measure of difference, mixed with some similarities and shared experience, is a sufficient chemistry for a good friendship. 

On account of Nel, I was encouraged to make the move away from home and grow in independence as a man. Nel listened to me and showed me respect. Nel trusted me, as a 20-year old, to run his lawn care business for a month whilst he was travelling in India one summer. It was on the strength of Nel’s reputation that I got a job back up North after leaving college.

It was Nel who, through his travelling stories, encouraged me to look to the horizon and consider the big wide world out there, full of different people from other cultures with different customs and histories. It was Nel who told me about YWAM (Youth With A Mission) and encouraged me to seek God by giving it a try (I met my English wife in New Zealand doing a Discipleship Training School and we now live in England with our six wonderful children and have been happily married for fifteen years– thanks Nel!).  

Nobody asks to be born. God determines it. We simply find ourselves, having been born, alive in a particular family embedded within a wider cultural context. Yet, the scriptural narrative is that God’s love abounds to all people and that he is reconciling the world to himself in Christ. Moreover, this amazing work of God is carried out amidst the familiar personalities and routines of our lives. I can attest that God worked graciously in my life through Nelson as a part of his story of redemption, and continues to do so. 

“[God has] determined allotted periods and the boundaries of [peoples’] dwelling place[s], that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us.” (Acts 17:26-27)