In this entry Nelson reviews a long list of things for which he’s thankful.

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September 23, 2022 (Continued…)

Thank you, Lord, for the generosity of all the people who gave on the GoFundMe campaign to make my recovery possible. I pray we don’t get into any trouble with house taxes and can get out of it clean and not owe too much, once all this is said and done.

It’s like we are big kids now with a child and a house and you are the one who has done it, Lord. Thank you that we are getting a new roof for the place, right along with it. What a blessing and a huge expense we don’t have to pay.

Thank you for the tenants and for the hot location right by the clinic. Thank you that we have the baby boy and for how healthy he has been from the start. What a miracle he is, and what a miracle-working God you are.

I told Rob how grateful I am for BBC [Tennessee church] and all the years we have been working under them, and he said, “That’s true, but you have been faithful and a good steward, and you deserve it.”

I hope you see me like that, Lord, as a good steward. You sure have given me a lot wherever we have landed. Even back in Hawaii, we had Hale Ola and the Kona church and the charge of running and stewarding both properties. What a cool thing, and I’m thankful for that too, Lord.

I pray we can keep doing what honors and makes you happy, whatever that is. I pray for the ability mentally to always pass along whatever wealth you pass to us, and to be conscious of where it came from and that we didn’t bring anything to the table to begin with. Thank you for all the faithful prayer warriors like Bill, Mom, Astrid, Linni, and so many others who have been there along the way for us and who have been “nagging” you to make things happen.

Thank you that Mom can come up and be here while the Germans are back in Germany. What a blessing, both that you brought Mom up but that we have the money to send Annso, Astrid, and Will to the Motherland.

I hope and pray Annso can enjoy herself and not worry too much about me back here. Hopefully she’ll get to pay her granny the last respects and introduce Will to them.

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It’s hard to believe how much abuse a body can take and then recover from. I have been stuck hundreds of times with needles to draw blood, loads of IVs stuck in my arms, so many so that the arm they used to hit a vein every time, now needs half a dozen tries to make anything work.

I had catheters in my lungs and urinary track, holes in my shoulders and even one right near my heart to draw fluids. My legs, abdomen, lower back, and arm were puffed up to twice their usual size. I have been taking pills for everything imaginable. I’m addicted to opiates, and I’d think I could never come back to my normal self, but today I feel pretty good.

Annso and I went to the doc with Will and then to Target and came back and ate with Ralph and Astrid. I love living life with Annso and can’t imagine life without her with me. Thank you for her, Lord, for the gift she is and how kind she is to me.

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“He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.” (Proverbs 18:22)

Cancer patients learn to ride the roller coaster but never lose hope that tomorrow will be a better day. In this journal entry Nelson is feeling good with very little pain, enjoying an “up” day.

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September 23, 2022

Went to our first small group here in Rochester last night. They do a full 2 hours: ice breaker, introductions, highs and lows for the week, the scripture reading and discussion, then split up guys and girls for a whole hour.

This morning, I’m soooo grateful for feeling good. Almost every morning, I sit here before dawn and journal. Most of the mornings I feel so bad, I’m popping Advil with my head down or a blanket on, trying to pull out of a hole. Neck pain or nausea or both. But today, there is almost no pain at all!

Yesterday, we found out that the chemo meds are working!!! The Cancer is shrinking. There was so much less of it on the scan, and I’m so thankful for that. Lord, thank you for that progress.

Yesterday we also found out we are almost all the way to being qualified to buying a house—on our own without help from anyone else. No co-signer. That was the prayer, Lord, only you and us. No arm of man or Egypt to get it through.

Thank you for encouraging us to keep trying. I’m so happy, and it shows what you can do for a couple of ywam-ers who don’t have any official incomes, really. But you are getting it done for us. We might even live for almost nothing as a result of this. How cool is that?!

Thank you for my health today, for the house, and for our little family who goes along here day after day making baby steps toward you with our arms open.

We have no idea what we’re doing. We have no real money. We don’t even have a realtor. But you have made this possible. Thank you for Luke and for Mom, for Astrid and Ralph, for Annso and how she has all this stamina and a great attitude to keep on trucking, even when I don’t feel good enough to do it on my own.

Thank you for our Honda Pilot and how you make even little dreams like that come true. For our Cichlid fish and how they are thriving, and the giant fish tank we have in this apartment and how these represent something non-work, non-cancer-related, that we were able to do on the side.

Thank you for the cool weather and the fall colors that are coming into view. Thank you for our little apartment that has served us so well this past 6 months.

Thank you for how well the lease has lined up with us leaving and moving into town, for how close our place is to the Mayo clinic, for the fact that it has 2 lots, that Annso has such a heart and vision for the house and wants to drive-by often and dream about what we’ll do with it.

(…to be continued)

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“I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving.” (Psalm 116:17)

Today Nelson writes about the new hope he feels after comparing body scans from July and the current week of September. The dynamite immunotherapy chemo seems to be shrinking the cancer, as they’d hoped. It’s difficult to believe, but the pictures tell the story.

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September 22, 2022

Today was a big day for us here In Rochester. We had the results of a scan interpreted to us by our main oncologist. To recap, I’d been on an oral, chemotherapy dose of 2 strong drugs that the research teams at Mayo were able to match genetically with the particular type of “small-cell” cancer I have.

This meant that for the past 5 weeks, my treatment is nothing more than taking 2 pills in the morning and 1 at night, which would essentially “shrink” the cancer, wherever it was in my body.

Each person reacts differently, so we didn’t know what sort of side effects I would have, or how quickly it would work. And of course, it might not work at all. The only way to find out is to try. Then, at the end of 6 weeks, they do a scan and see.

So here we are. I have 2 pictures from that scan. The scans are taken as if I were cut into .75 mm thick slices like a tree, looking up from my feet. In the pictures there are 2 lungs in black and the spine, organs, and other arteries in the center, presenting in white.

The first picture, from July 1, looks much more crowded than the second from Sept 17. Looking at the second picture I can see the difference, how much more clear the photo looks. Other pictures were taken from the same vantage point and same dates but further up toward my head.

I asked for those because I wanted to see a shot of the largest tumor, “before and after.” It had gone from 5.5 mm to 3.6 mm, but what does that look like? The pictures show an artery coming into the heart. It’s nearly totally collapsed by the tumor in the earlier shot and wide-open in the most recent one!

This is great news, and we are so happy with it. If it keeps going like this, I will be in great shape before long. Of course there are snags along the way, and the fevers this weekend are an example of that.

As for pausing treatment, we’re resuming on Monday, pending a spike in my liver levels that showed a little concern today. Each patient responds differently to treatment, and I wonder why I didn’t have fevers up until now.

The Doc said he has seen patients taking the same meds where one has a totally different set of side effects than the next. I am unique, so we pause and resume. Hopefully, we get another 5 weeks of treatment without fever. If we do, we react to it and hope to be able to keep going. After all, the best 2 words he said today were, “IT’S WORKING!”

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“Be strong and courageous. Do not fear…” (Deuteronomy 31:6)