Commentary from Nelson on a tiring day

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We have received some good help today. As I’m writing this, I’m sitting on a bed in a small room like any other hospital room. There’s a TV and snacks and a little table with the IV drip stand like usual, only this time it’s for chemotherapy and immunotherapy.

Picture this. I come to the hospital at 6:45 in the morning for a blood draw for them to continue testing things. Then I go into another room to talk to a doctor for a while about medications, making sure we should move forward with the chemotherapy.

After that, at about 9:30 AM, I come to this room. Today it took two nurses and one doctor five different attempts to find a functioning vein in one of my arms so they could run the IV. I guess I’ve been stuck enough times to make it difficult to find success.

Once they get that squared away, they begin emptying one bag of liquid into me after another. The amazing thing is that the contents of the bags are poison in one sense. After this, I’m not supposed to kiss my wife, and when I go to the bathroom, I’m supposed to flush the toilet two times after sitting down to pee, because the fluid is so radioactive. But apparently this stuff is death to cancer.

It’s not cheap, though. I’m told that the bag containing immunotherapy costs more than $30,000. Can you imagine spilling it by mistake?

I have five of these chemo/immuno infusions scheduled over the next many weeks, each one with a CAT scan in between to monitor progress going forward. Today I’m receiving the second of the five. In three weeks I’ll get the next one.

All the testing, scans, appointments, consultations, studies, and everything else comes down to me sitting here in this hospital bed with that clear liquid going into my blood. And that’s the cancer-killer. Isn’t that weird?

After the three hour infusion was over today, I was scheduled for another draining of my lung called a thoracentesis. This time it was the left side instead of the right. In the four months since this medical drama began, I’ve only had the left lung drained once, and there wasn’t much extra fluid there then. Today they pulled out 2.2 liters—breaking my old record for biggest draw ever, which was 1.6 liters. No wonder I needed oxygen all the time. There will be pain for a few days every time I take a breath, but that will gradually subside. And meanwhile, I’m able to get more air.

It’s been a tiring day, but as I said, we received some good help today.

“In the Lord…my heart trusts, and I am helped.” (Psalm 28:7)

Nelson’s Sister Linnea, Conclusion

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All Christians are called to disciple others. We’re all supposed to influence each other for good. But some people do it more than most, and Nelson is that kind of Christian. (I wonder how many of you reading this right now would say Nelson discipled you in some way? Probably a lot!)

I’m not sure who I would be without my big brother. I definitely would not have gone to YWAM, so I wouldn’t be Adam’s wife and we wouldn’t have our six wonderful kids.

I’m also not sure where I would be spiritually. As a kid, I thought of Christianity as a lifestyle. We were good people and we went to church every Sunday because it was the right thing to do. But Nelson showed me that a true life of faith is so much more than that! It’s an adventure.

It’s about meeting with God when you first wake up. You open your Bible, read and pray, but you also listen. You wait for God to speak, and you trust that He will guide you. You expect that God has good things planned for you, and you look for His hand in every circumstance.

People in YWAM have almost no money, but somehow they go all over the world! I watched Nelson do it and then I did it, too. During my YWAM years, God took me to China, Taiwan, Nepal, India, Japan, Thailand, and New Zealand. In between, I lived in Hawaii and then Montana.

I held the sweetest orphan babies, hiked through the Himalayas, and met Christians who had left everything familiar to be lifelong missionaries overseas.

Those years shaped me in a way nothing else could have. How can you complain about a van without air conditioning after you’ve watched a mother in Calcutta nurse her baby while lying in the gutter on the side of the road on a 90 degree afternoon? I will always be grateful for the gift of YWAM in my twenties and the brother who encouraged me to go.

Right now our children are ages 3 to 13, and they all love their Uncle Nelson. We live way down in Florida, but Nelson still finds a way to visit. He has always gone out of his way for people, including us. Our six year old is named after his uncle, and out of all our kids, little Nel asks me about his Uncle Nelson the most.

I read updates from the blog to the kids in the mornings, and we then pray together for him and Auntie Sophie and baby Will. Even little kids understand the power of Nelson’s thankful spirit right now. Even now in this season of battling cancer, Nelson continues to influence the people who know and love him, always toward God and His faithfulness.

I am thankful to have a little time in Minnesota this week, to chat with Nelson and Sophie and hold baby Will as much as possible! And I’m thankful for the things I’ve learned from my big brother—mostly that a life following God is the best kind of adventure, full of laughter and strong coffee, wild stories in faraway places and friendships that never end.

It’s a life of peace and gratitude even when circumstances are crushingly hard. Nelson has suffered through so much this year, but he is still the Nelson we all know and love. Still strong, still optimistic, still up for a good conversation about what God is doing in our lives.

From Linnea about her brother Nelson

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I owe a lot to my big brother Nelson.

When I went off to college, I began to drift away from the things I had always believed. I used my doubts and questions about God as a reason to basically do whatever I wanted, even things I knew were wrong.

Then during my senior year, Nelson moved to town. He had been out serving at the Youth With a Mission (YWAM) base in Hawaii for several years, but since he was only one year short of his bachelor’s degree, he decided to come back to the Midwest to finish it. The two of us graduated from Anderson University together on the same day in May of 1999.

What a relief that must have been for my dad! Education was a top priority for him and he worked hard to make sure we all had the chance to go to college. Nelson mostly finished school to honor his father, which makes me think of Ephesians 6:2-3: “Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, so that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life in the land.” When I pray for Nelson now, I love thinking about how he has obeyed this command!

During the year we were together at Anderson University, Nelson went out of his way to spend time with me. We would go out for coffee and talk about spiritual things. He never preached at me, but always listened to me without judgment and tried to answer my questions. And he talked a lot about YWAM.

As graduation approached, I had a growing uneasiness about the direction I was going. I felt guilty for some of the choices I was making and wondered if I needed to make a complete break from my life as it was. I began to think maybe God had a better plan for me.

I will admit, I might not have initially decided to try YWAM for holy reasons. But once I got out there, far away from everyone and everything I knew, I could suddenly see my life more clearly—how ungrateful I had been, how self-focused, and how deceitful.

As I read my Bible, listened to the teachings, and talked with my leaders, I realized I was far from who God wanted me to be. And I was a wreck, filled with regret and desperate for God to forgive me and change me. After two months there, I was baptized in the Pacific Ocean off the main pier in Kona, and I knew I would never be the same again.

During those early months on the YWAM base, the same thing happened many times. Someone would mention my brother Nelson, and a new acquaintance would say, “Wait! You’re NELSON’S sister?!” And then suddenly, a virtual stranger would give me a hug and start telling me a story about some crazy adventure they’d had with Nelson in a third world county. I had instant friends everywhere because I was Nelson’s little sister. I loved it.

A year into my time with YWAM, I met Adam, who became my husband. At that point Nelson was living in Nashville and not on the YWAM base, so Adam had never met him, but he knew all about him from the stories his leaders had shared!

(Conclusion tomorrow…)