My first visit to U of M in 2019 with my oncologist began with us both agreeing that it was time for me to discontinue the clinical trial drug. The CT scan revealed that it was no longer retarding the growth of the tumors in my lungs. For me, discontinuing the clinical trial drug was good news because the side effects had seriously compromised my quality of life in the past 11 months (the constant uproar in my digestive system alone caused me to have no regrets in being taken off the drug. I lost 20lbs while on the clinical trial). Now the question was, what do we do at this point?
We quickly came to the decision that radiation of the four tumors in my lungs would be the best tradeoff of good results with the fewest side effects. The oncologist emphasized that I would need to get these treatments in Ann Arbor rather than locally, which was fine with me, given my experience with the radiation treatments of my arm at a local facility. I was scheduled to get treatments of two tumors, then a pause for a couple of weeks before gePng the other two done.
The treatments required me to use the Deep Inhalation Breath Hold (DIBH) method with a 40 second breath hold at the end to provide a stable target for the radiation beam. I had to do this repeatedly (7 to 10 times) for each treatment. It is very demanding that my breathing be very precise and you could become very stressed in trying to achieve that precision. Rather than be intimidated by thinking of the number of times I would have to successfully perform the DIBH, I concentrated on only each breath hold at a time and didn’t look at the stopwatch counting up the 40 seconds. Instead I recited Philippians 4:13, changing emphasis with each repetition: “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength,” “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength,” “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength,” “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength,” Not only does this make the 40 second breath hold seem to go faster, it makes the treatment session of 10 breath holds go faster. Before you know it, I’m done and praying a prayer of gratitude that I was able to do it all perfectly, by His grace. Just another example of how enlisting heavenly resources can help you prosper through adversity.
