how do you live when your timeline is short

This is part 4 of Peter's telling of his journey with Carol

Hi again. I thought I would go back and re-visit a question I asked last time:

So how do you live when your timeline is short – measured in months?

I talked a bit before about how Carol felt but let me explore a bit more. How do live when someone tells you that you have a fatal disease and there is no effective treatment?

I know a lot more now about the cancer that invaded her. When we met with the Ocular Oncologist back in 2000, she asked: how come you were not being checked? Checked? Carol was born with some dark spots on her eyeball and sometimes had a bluish tinge around her eye. We learned this condition is called the Nevus of Ota. Check out a picture here – Carol’s left eye looked very similar. Ocular melanoma occurs in about 3-5 people per million; if you have the Nevus of Ota it occurs in about 1 per 100 or so. Who knew?

Normally after 5 years or so in remission patients are declared cancer free and any re-occurrence is then treated as a new cancer. Not so with ocular melanoma. Turns out that 50-80 percent of people will develop a metastasis – cancer spreading somewhere else - in their lifetime. Turns out that almost invariably it first re-occurs in the liver.

Turns out that the medical profession is way behind in its understanding of treatments for metastatic OM. I have since discovered that, while there is no cure, there are a number of treatments which can potentially extend ones life. I know of people 2+ years after diagnosis and still living very well. A couple of docs in the US specialize in treatments. Who knew?

Remember the verses (Ecclesiastes 5:18-20) that God gave us about the importance of Today? One day Carol turned to me and said that those verses weren’t working for her any more – she needed more hope.

My Mom gave us a book called “Cancer and the Lords Prayer” by Greg Anderson. He describes the power of this prayer of Jesus to heal our lives – from God’s perspective. Somehow this simple short book connected with Carol and brought her closer to her true Father and filled her with hope for each day. In fact, I still have on my fridge the copy of the Lord’s Prayer she printed out.

One day as we were driving she said, “I have never been able to picture heaven as a place I would want to go to – but yesterday God gave me a vision”. She described how she had this picture of this most beautiful trip – better than any we had taken – that she was going on. The trip was going from one beautiful place to another even more beautiful and it lasted forever. She said: “I can go to heaven if it’s a place like that”.
She (obviously) was filled with fear as well. She did not really talk with me about her fears that much. That was reserved for her very best friend Elaine – her friend since she was 15. I have discovered that there were lots of conversations about darkness and fear that I was unaware of.

One day Elaine woke up with a strong feeling that she should buy Carol a book. It was called “Hinds Feet on High Places”. It is the story of someone called Much-Afraid and her exciting journey to the High Places. Carol just ate this book up. She loved it and it just calmed her soul.

One of her fears was of pain. I know that she was afraid of what pain awaited her. Her true Father knew this too and he had a plan.

That comes next time. See you then.

Peter

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