Dee's Story

One Cell at a Time!

In the summer of 1998, in the midst of the first change of
address in 43 years, another huge change flipped my otherwise
settled life. Cancer entered the picture and turned the rejoicing
over our new home into a negative situation. We were hardly
settled in and the dreams I had for spending our remaining
healthy retirement years in a lovely new neighborhood turned into
fear and dread and guilt for putting us into such a situation.
Perhaps I would not be here to help my mate in the adjustment to
new surroundings and the obligations of maintaining the place. It
was, after all, my idea to move. A new beginning after all the
years of work seemed the right thing to do. How could I have
known that this blackness was ahead for us? I was the healthiest
person I knew!

The cancer was discovered accidentally during gall bladder surgery.
Rare and treatable were the words used to describe the
appendix cancer that was detected. No reasons why, nothing to do more
than the already performed surgery which included the removal of
the appendix, since it was so rare no statistics were available
because of so little research. Of course Chemo could be tried but
had not been found effective. Consultation with Research Doctors
in the capital city of our state gave us these opinions. It could grow,
it could just "hang there", or (an answer which I had to pull eye
teeth to get) it could just go away.

My trust and belief in Jesus Christ was strong, but this was a
blow to my faith. Somehow it was easier to believe God would do
something for someone else than it was to believe God would do
something for me.

While in the hospital recovering from a post surgical blood clot,
I saturated my spirit with tapes of praise and worship.
Grasping as I listened I reaffirmed my understanding of who
God is, how great is His compassion and His love and
determined in my heart that I would discover what He would
teach me from this experience.

There were many special friends who helped me as I re-
established my belief system. I needed to know how I had
opened myself to this kind of attack. One special friend
reminded me that the appendix is an unnecessary organ which
collects things that should be flushed out of the system.
Applying that to the spiritual life meant flushing out some
things in my internal life that should not have been there to
literally "rot" or contaminate my inner man. She suggested that
I make a list of all of the people I had not forgiven, another list
of all the people I needed to pray for, and another of all of the
people and things for which I was thankful.

The purging began, and I was amazed at the people and things
that began to come to the surface that I had pushed far into
some appendix of my soul and spirit. People I had held silly
grudges against, even though I had never acted out any animosity
toward them, came to mind. I forgave them all. The healing had begun...

Later, as I continued to struggle, this same friend counseled me,
"Dee, if you can't believe in God for a miracle, you know you have
faith enough to believe He can kill one cancer cell at a time.""
Of Course! So that became my course of believing faith. One cell
at a time, Lord, kill one cell at a time! I believe you can and will
kill one cell at a time! What a breakthrough! My faith and my
prayer were now equal. It was a prayer of true faith. The kind of
prayer that Jesus said would be answered. I wasn't asking past
my belief and I knew in my heart that I could depend on Him.
Daily that faith grew and daily my cancer antigen cell counts
went down.

By mid July of 1999 the cell counts were almost half of what
they had been in January. By December of 1999 all blood tests
were normal!

At some point during those early days, I envisioned the hand of God
entering the center of my being and closing tight around the cancer
totally containing it and holding it fast. But not yet removed.
In July I felt God had spoken to my heart and said "Your healing
is complete". There could be no verification of that until my nest
trip for tests in December, but in my heart I felt it was true.
The December tests verified it!

I don't know all the answers. I only know what happened to me and
that at the present time I feel healthy, happy and healed.
That is enough for me.

To Contact Dee