Why a blog about melanoma and it’s treatment options and what to expect? Some immediately turn to the old adage: “Misery loves company”. While that may be true, I prefer reference to the life of Jesus: “Though He was God’s Divine Son, yet He matured through actual experience of submitted, obedient suffering> (combination of translations from Hebrews 5:8).

It’s one thing to have a mental realization of a health condition – to read up on it, to have the facts, to sort through the scary stories about what it all might lead to, and make a firm determination that = “….As long as I am trusting the Lord, everything will turn out alright, for His glory and my good”.

Frankly, I can’t get my mind around how people who don’t have the Lord to hang onto deal with it. For me, having a firm foundation of faith helps me to hang onto hope, hang onto the promises that I have at my fingertips in the Scriptures (especially the promises that my life and my total healing from everything will go on after this earthly existence). 

That being said, it’s much easier to be infused with hope, faith, courage, etc. when I’m feeling stable. It becomes much more challenging when I’m feeling strange, negative reactions in my body (many of which are new, and I can’t identify exactly where they’re coming from – is it the cancer; is it the immunotherapy; is there some new metastasis starting to develop in another part of my body; is it something else.) Those questions begin to gnaw at my subconscious and must constantly be pushed down. I have found that, as I pray, the Lord will give me relief, and I will be free of them. However, when they return, I must bite the bullet, say: “Okay, Lord, here it goes again” and go through the whole process of telling the Lord that I’m holding onto Him in faith and trusting Him through Romans 8:28, claiming verses, fighting to not let my mind go down the negative rabbit holes.

Each of us is unique biologically. We are not medical textbook diagrams of each other. Through a lifetime of different interactions with diseases, pollutants, medications, allergies, etc. we develop different types of immune resistance …or immune weakness. That is accompanied by what we are putting into our bodies on a regular basis (what foods, what stimulants, what drugs, vitamins, etc.); what type of exercise we do on a regular basis; how well we sleep; what stress levels we regularly operate under; our overall nervous condition (frequency and intensity of nervous reactions – for example I tend to get very hungry when nervous), our particular nervous condition at the moment (what triggers our nervous reactions and how we deal with that, etc. Finally, what particular experiences in life one has gone through, and what that can trigger when one faces a new but similar situation. 

I’ve cared for 4 friends with cancer- three of them made it safely to their new life on the other side, after much suffering. My nun friend, Hma Pamela is still going, despite constant, intense suffering for almost 20 yrs.. She’s been through more than 10 surgeries, untold numbers of chemotherapies, periods of addiction to morphine, periods of going “cold turkey” off of morphine, and the loss of her faithful canine friend and constant companion, Florencia.

I used to feel sorry for her and felt that I was helping her. Now in my own suffering and instability over my future, I admire her. She just keeps going – like the cork in the ocean, a huge wave will knock her for a loop, and she’ll go under, then bounce right back up again!

The cork in the ocean sounds inspiring, however, I’m discovering that it’s difficult to actually do, especially over the long haul. Plus, there’s a tendency for many people to give up and lose the motivation to continue supporting someone who keeps getting knocked under waves in the ocean. Sometimes, out of pure frustration, it becomes easier to put the blame on the cork for not doing more to help themselves.