August 30th, 2007 by admin
I was told that I needed to go see an oncologist before removal of the eye to see if the cancer had spread to any other part of my body. If it had spread, then the approach on this whole thing may change. Around this same time frame my parents who had been living in Delaware sold their house and moved in with Missy and me in Oklahoma. We were going to build them a garage cottage on the side of our house and help them enjoy life in their retirement. My mother had always enjoyed Billie Bryme�s teachings, and it just so happened that her home church was in the next town over. She was scheduled to be speaking there. I needed a miracle and I knew that Billie Bryme moved in the gifts.
Meanwhile, I had gone to the oncologist and had the scans done on the rest of my body before going to see Billie Bryme. During the meeting she had a word for people to come up to the front if there was a growth or tumor in the body. I responded along with many others. Just another conformation that the church does not really walk in the healing that the Bible teaches is ours. She came to me and grabbed my hands, threw them up in the air and said, �Do not fear, it is done.� It would have been nice for more detail, but I took what she said like a bee takes to honey. I was encouraged and believed that everything was going to be alright and that the scans would come back fine with no further spreading. I also took it to mean that I was going to be healed completely.
August 29th, 2007 by admin
Needless to say, Missy and I sat through the descriptions of the surgeries while also trying to assimilate the fact that I had cancer in the eye. It was a numbing experience, and we just did not know how to react. We had faith on one hand, but we also had facts on the other. And with cancer there are two physical fights: the body and time. Those who have battled a life threatening situation know what I mean when I say life is different. Every day begins to be worth more. Time no longer is a frivolous commodity to spend at leisure. Time becomes a treasure that never comes back. Spend wisely.
We left the plastic surgeon�s office and somehow found a way to smile. Missy had made a comment on how stupid the devil was since I had been doing those eye compressions every two hours for months and was pushing the cancer cells into the rest of my body. It seemed funny when she said it, but we had also come to the realization that this aggressive attack on my body had to stop. The devil was not only trying to blind me, but now he was trying to take my eye, disfigure my face, and take my life. Something had to be done with this devil.
August 28th, 2007 by admin
In March of 2006 just a few months after the second valve surgery, I had the biopsy on the right eye, and in April received a diagnosis of Iris Melanoma. The only option the doctors gave me was to remove the eye completely. Chemotherapy and radiation were not options for this type of cancer. Every emotion and hope that I had plummeted south, deep, deep south. I questioned: What in the world had I done to deserve this? I had gone from an area of blindness in the eye to total removal of the eye. No eye; no sight.
At this point I thought God really has my attention now, if He had not already. It is amazing that when the challenges come, God helps us to face them. When the battle is hard, we can still stand. As a result of this new diagnosis, I was sent to a plastic surgeon who gave me information on the procedures that could be used to remove the eye. There were a couple of different ones that were possible depending on how badly the cancer had affected the eye, and that would be determined once in the surgery room. One of the surgeries would remove the eye only and recovery would be favorable. The other surgery would remove not only the eye, but also some eye tissue and possibly muscle. This surgery could be disfiguring.
August 27th, 2007 by admin
I really wish at this point I could stop this story and write that we went home and all was well. However, the doctor noticed that my iris was discolored. Well the iris had been discolored since the very beginning, way back when I first noticed the partial blindness. This was dismissed as a loss of pigmentation due to trauma from the car accident. It had never been an issue over the years and none of the previous doctors were ever concerned with it. Nonetheless, this last doctor who had done the valve surgery was concerned about this discoloration and wanted to have a cornea specialist come up and take a look. We were not ready for anymore bad news, after all the eye pressure was finally stabilized, and we wanted to move on with life and continue to believe God for the healing of the blindness that was still in the lower part of the eye.
The cornea specialist expressed concern and, subsequently, wanted to run some tests including a biopsy on the iris, which required another surgery. Having already had 3 surgeries and a needling procedure, I just was exasperated to think of another surgery. I sought wisdom and counsel from friends and family � all deemed unanimously in favor of the biopsy with the reasoning that it is better to know anything else about my eye as opposed to guessing what else might be wrong. As with all surgeries, the risk of the biopsy meant that if the problem really was what my doctors thought it might be, then the surgery could cause the spread.
August 26th, 2007 by admin
As a sales manager for a company, I was in front of clients and others all the time. I knew that if I did the surgery that I could be risking a lot, but I was just at a loss for what to do and had to have the surgery done. Missy and I just prayed. We were very concerned about the possibility of double vision but had no other choice but to trust God. We had to believe. Sometimes when life looks bleak, the only choice is to believe.
I came through the surgery fine with not a trace of double vision. I actually recovered well from the surgery and was able to see really well except for the area of blindness that I had not recovered from originally. My pressure in the eye was good and stable. I could go down to one drop in the eye, and I did not have to do the eye compressions anymore. At one of my last post surgery office visits, the doctor did his usual check. Pressure was good, I could see well, and the best news was there was no double vision.
August 25th, 2007 by admin
I was sinking fast and was losing hope that God really wanted me well. I had experienced every emotion in the book. I had faith, hope, excitement, joy, anticipation, comfort, but I also had depression, despair, fear, anxiety, pain and hopelessness. The only thing left to do was to look to God and cry for mercy. I realized that even though I had been in faith oriented churches all my life and had enjoyed youth pastoring, missions, and associate pastoring, I had nothing on healing figured out. Suddenly, everything that I had believed was in question. It was a soul searching time — a crystallizing time where the big question was: What is truth?
This had to be the search, because whatever truth is, that is the way it was going to be. Nothing will change truth, and I might as well come to that conclusion. So everything that I had learned in my past was going to be questioned on the basis of whether or not it was truth.
As aforementioned, the pushing on the eye, the taking of the multiple eye drops, the taking of the pills, and the massive amounts of office visits lasted for about 3 months. It only stopped when I was rushed to the hospital with the most horrible pain in my lower back. The pills I had been on had created a wonderful kidney stone that was trying to get out. I will avoid the details, after a couple of days I was able to resume normal life. Consequently, the doctors immediately removed pills from my treatment regimen, which then put me on a fast track for a second valve surgery. This time it would be a different doctor and a different type valve. In December of that year I had the second valve surgery — my third surgery overall. The scary thing about this surgery was the possibility of double vision. With that much hardware in the eye, there is a tendency for the eye to lack strength for movement in comparison to the other eye, therefore, causing double vision. This could only be corrected with special kind of lenses in glasses.
August 24th, 2007 by admin
About six weeks or so after the June checkup, I had the dreaded valve surgery, which I am sad to say, also did not work. My visits to the doctor�s office increased to 3 times a week, and he added an exercise called eye compressions. I had to push on the eye every two hours to manually push my eye fluid through the valve and out of the back of the eye. I also had to go on every eye drop possible along with pills. After all this, my pressure was still high and hovering around thirty. It was worse than it had ever been, and now I had hardware in the eye that could not be removed. Furthermore, the pills were known to cause kidney stones. I kept up the 3 per week office visits, kept pushing on the eye every two hours, took the eye drops, and popped down the pills. It was a disaster, and it went on for the next 3 months.
I had heard that walking in faith was easy, and all I had to do to be healed was receive it. I Peter 2:24 said that I was already healed. I tried to see that with my spiritual eyes. I tried to understand what Jesus already had done for me. The result was that I just got more frustrated when preachers would say that it was �easy� to receive. Maybe I could not figure out �easy.� Maybe my easy button did not work. If it was so easy why was it going on three years and I was worse off then I had ever been? I would confess and say that �I receive,� but total healing continued to elude me.
August 23rd, 2007 by admin
To make matters worse, I had been having certain dreams all along which had tornadoes, snakes, and lions in them. Some nights I would have a tornado dream, other nights maybe the snakes. They happened at random times, and I had been having them for years. I began wondering what these meant — if anything. Maybe God was trying to tell me something or warn me of something. Tornadoes seemed to represent destruction, and they were quite awesome in the dreams. I thought that maybe the devil was associated with the snakes, and I had no clue what the lions were, but I was always afraid of them in my dreams. I had so many of these types of dreams that it was a little unnerving. I just made a mental note of them and shelved them. If nothing came to me, I would just dismiss them. It was not until later that I began to understand what these meant.
August 22nd, 2007 by admin
After a successful church plant, we moved back to the Tulsa area. It was now March of 2005, and we set our sights in on other opportunities that we felt the Lord showing us. We had enjoyed our time in Arizona and had met some wonderful people whom we will cherish for a lifetime. Missy and I took jobs and settled in to accomplish a few things. The pressure in the eye seemed to be stable and had been that way since we saw the doctor in Arizona in August of 2004. My next checkup was not scheduled until June 1st. I was still on the eye drops the doctor in Arizona had given me, and they seemed to be working in keeping the pressure stable.
On June 1st I went in for the check up and to my dismay the pressure had risen again. The drops were no longer working and a second surgery was inevitable. This was so disheartening. I was nervous and scared and trying to have faith. I would quote healing scriptures and my Jeremiah 17:7-8 key that I received while in Arizona. God told me if I trust in him my leaf would be green. Surgery did not sound like that. It sounded like my leaf was going to be cut. This was the valve surgery that I was told about on previous visits and I was not happy. Indeed this journey was an up and down journey, and I felt like I had no answers for anything. Everything that I had believed in and grew up believing was not working. Hopelessness is a horrible thing.
August 21st, 2007 by admin
Once again, days turned into weeks and weeks into months and still the blindness in the lower part of the right eye remained. The pressure had remained stable, but the blindness was still not healed. This faith thing was difficult. The believer feels like he or she believes but still does not see any results; plus it did not ever take this long for Jesus to heal someone in the Bible. I was approaching 2 years with this issue. I just did not get it. What was Jesus waiting for? Why was it taking so long?
