Right around this time last year I posted up about my Dad’s battle with cancer.  A number of people have asked me for an update on that front, so I figured I probably should write again.  My father was diagnosed with follicular lymphoma, a non-Hodgkins variation of cancer - technically speaking, there is no cure.  It was initially believed that he was diagnosed at an early stage of the disease, and to his disappointment, they weren’t offering any treatment.  The plan was simply to monitor the disease as it progressed, and when it became more acute they would re-evaluate their plans.  Like most of us I suppose, having the spectre of a cancer progressing within his body wasn’t something he wanted to face on a daily basis.  Battling an abstract killer, fighting with shadows, is a difficult sentence to be handed.  Compounding the sense of helplessness was that given his age, we realized that they likely never really contemplated treating him - chemotherapy, clinical trials and bone marrow transplants were for younger candidates.  Put coldly, dying of lymphoma in your 30s was something less medically acceptable than dying of lymphoma in your 70s.  It’s a disturbing form of calculus that they thankfully don’t teach in school.

And then suddenly, as quickly as it appeared, it simply vanished.  Blood tests, CAT scans, bone marrow tests all failed to find any trace.  Test results continued to appear as if he’d never had the disease at all.  Yesterday, an annual CAT scan and blood test came back clean.  Rather than waiting for a confirmatory test result - medical speak for “waiting for the other shoe to drop”, we now believe that this thing isn’t coming back.  That he has indeed “kicked cancer’s ass”.  As a family we’re enormously thankful and relieved - incredibly so.  A man of deep religious convictions, Dad doesn’t attribute anything to “luck”, preferring instead to credit his condition to God’s mercy and grace. 

Amen.