Ten years ago I played my way through the most redemptively tragic video game that I think will ever be released — That Dragon, Cancer. I wrote about that experience at the time, but the premise is you follow a family through the process of their young son’s diagnosis, treatment and death, with all the feels — including the eucatastrophic hope (that’s Tolkien’s word for ‘good catastrophe’) of resurrection because the family placed their trust in the Lord Jesus through their darkest valley.
That dragon, cancer.
I have, for a bit, been fairly interested in the way a battle with that dragon, Satan, is actually the narrative framing of the Bible from its first page to its last. And the way that — like Eustace in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader — to give in to our baser desires to objectify, extract and consume the world — becoming ‘like gods’ (especially the ancient gods of Babylon with their pet dragons) — is to become ‘dragon-like’ or serpenty.
Reading the Bible through this sort of ‘enchanted framework’ does change the way we encounter and view material reality — not just things like politics or ‘the machine’ — the rapacious individualism driving extractive neo-liberal capitalism to the detriment of the planet and our fellow and future humans, but also things like cancer. And so, for the last month, I have been facing (and continue to face in various ways) the dragon.
I am red-green colour blind. It turns out that being red-green colour blind makes it harder for a person to notice blood in their bowel movements (and another study suggests this is also the case with urine). This means I don’t know when I began having symptoms of a dragon growing in my colon; but at one point there was undeniably blood, and, though I was tempted to ignore it because ‘young people don’t get cancer’ or ‘it couldn’t happen to me’ and also ‘I don’t want people looking at or sticking things up my bum’ — I’d read just enough tragic stories of people in their 20s-40s being diagnosed with bowel cancer and discovering it too late that I went to my GP.
I have heard horror stories of people in similar situations being ignored or sent down the path of various other medical explanations and being again, diagnosed at a much later stage, and so I am thankful my GP sent me off for a colonoscopy.
And — if you’re a young person (or youngish or ‘too young’ or middle aged person), and you have symptoms (look them up), or a colour blind person and you ‘wonder’ if that is a weird colour or mucousy or something — go get checked. Our modern way of life is, for whatever reason, producing more of these tumours in younger and younger people.
So. Just over a month ago, I woke up from my twilight anaesthetic after my colonoscopy to hear the doctor who wheeled me back to the recovery area tell the nurse who would help me wake up “this was a bad one, we found something.”
I spent a harrowing thirty minutes knowing I had cancer lying in a hospital bed waiting to be officially told (and for Robyn to arrive so we could be told together). How was I going to face this dragon?
I spent some of that time — in the absence of much clear knowledge about staging or anything really — facing worst case scenarios. This wasn’t helped much when the doctor told us the tumour was the ‘size of his palm’ — that sounded big. I wondered how I would tell our kids; how we would help them not fear the dragon or be tempted to turn towards the darkness. I wondered how I would occupy a ‘public’ position as a Christian — in both the context of our family, our church family, our neighbourhood and even the Internet — while facing a dragon.
What would I say to the church congregations I preach to? How do I practice what I preach? How would I live out that calling?
How does one be public and grapple with a dragon without being performative while also being, by virtue of a position ‘exemplary’ — I’m not the first, or the last person who will face these questions and there were examples of others I had admired previously, including the Green family who created That Dragon, Cancer, and others closer to home like Dave McDonald, a long-term family friend who wrote Hope Beyond Cure (a book I’ve given people on their own cancer journeys for years).
How would I, in this moment of tempation — heading into a valley — or a wilderness journey — turn towards God and trust him, even if things were to turn towards the grave — rather than becoming miserable and introspective and bitter and angry; or grasping and objectifying and using all those around me to secure the ‘end’ I desired?
How would the way I think the story of the Bible works — full of enchantment and dragons and the push to shed one’s scales and discover true humanity in Jesus, by his Spirit — moving back towards ‘garden like’ life with God shape these next moments? Does the story work?
How would I steward this season with a kind of generosity and vulnerability rather than being miserely, miserable and walled off from others — all my self-protective impulses that would close me off and buffer me from the good, the true, and the beautiful?
And I found the phrase ‘that dragon, cancer’ bouncing around my mind from diagnosis day. And the picture of the Lord as ‘my shepherd’ who would lead me through the valley; the ‘lamb who was slain’ as the one who defeats that dragon, Satan, meant ultimately I didn’t need to slay the dragon but I could trust that he has, and he leads me towards life (it maybe helped that this banger, Shepherd, was one of the songs we sang the Sunday straight after my diagnosis as I kicked off a series on Numbers as a ‘journey with God through the wilderness’).
The last month facing the dragon has been a whirlwind.
In the first few days I found telling people my news an interesting form of processing and catharsis; firstly this looked like clearing my calendar for the next six months of all sorts of commitments “hey friend, you know I said I could do this — I probably can’t. I have cancer…” It was a comfort to simultaneously unburden myself of those commitments so I could face this thing, but also share the burden of knowing. Once I went ‘public’, I sort of ran out of people to tell. I have not had much time to privately stew or ruminate on this whole journey, but this cathartic verbal processing has continued as a way of being simultaneously introspective and extrospective (is that a word); this has largely come in the form of writing up some thoughts and sharing them with my network on social media. I have been inundated with messages from people throughout the wider church offering prayer and encouragement; and hearing stories of others also facing the dragon at various stages. I committed to praying for these fellow travellers at every step of my treatment journey as a way to not be miserably turned in on myself. That has been an incredibly helpful spiritual discipline — and the comfort of knowing others are praying for me has encouraged me to be a better prayer when I find myself out of the valley.
On the day I was diagnosed I was admitted to hospital. This was a surprise, a bonus, and a blessing. We were sent for an immediate CT Scan which picked up some liquid in my bowel and raised the possibility that it had perforated during the colonoscopy. It turned out to be the saline solution used as the tumour was tattooed during the procedure, but admission meant that rather than waiting for a week or two to have an MRI, these tests could be fast tracked by my surgical team while I was admitted. That night was long and dark. I had a cannula in my elbow that was a miserable experience. My ward mate snored. I snored too probably. I ‘dr googled’ bleak bits of information about worst case scenarios. I think this was the closest I came to staring into the abyss and being overcome by darkness, but the nurses and doctors in the surgical team and Ward 2B at Brisbane’s QEII hospital are experienced dragon fighters, and I both decided to trust them and like them — to perform ‘joy’ come what may, in the face of this darkness, and that this was probably the best posture to embrace for Robyn, for my kids, for my community and for me. It also probably wasn’t just performative or ‘faking it till I made it’ but actually an expression of who I would most like to be.
I left hospital the next day having heard my surgeon tell me the cancer had not spread to any secondary locations, and looked ‘treatable, operable, and curable’ — with a suggestion that the lymph nodes around the tumour were swollen and so a probable staging of ‘PT3 PN3 M0’ (the equivalent of an early stage 3), and a tentative surgery date less than two weeks later.
These next two weeks moved very quickly; they were full of appointments where I was pricked and prodded, where I was educated on how to use a stoma (on the possibility I would wake up from surgery and find myself having one), where I was asked to consent to robot-assisted surgery, and where I had to get some of my short term affairs in order. There still was not much time for rumination — I did not ask ‘why me?’ I did ponder the possibility that I would be ‘put to sleep’ for the surgery and not wake up; imagining not knowing that some complication had led to my death. That was as heavy as things got. I had to — and still have to — contemplate the long term implications of a “lower laproscopic bowel resection” on my continence (so far the signs are ok here, thanks for asking).
I had one or two moments of anger or ‘overwhelm’ at the absolute loss of control this all involved, and a kind of grief that no matter what happens in this fight with the dragon I will emerge scarred, and changed — and I have to grieve the version of me who ‘never had cancer’; that me is now gone. I like the metaphor of kintsugi and the idea that we can mend our broken bits with gold and become more valuable and beautiful; and certainly believe God works in that sort of ‘beauty from ashes’ way with all of us as the master potterer — but — I would still maybe prefer an unscarred bowel that is its full length, and a tummy without keyhole scars, and a slightly less painful and scary valley to have to walk through.
In one moment, between diagnosis and surgery, I was picking up dog poo in our back yard resenting the idea that I had to spend any minutes on such a task while my minutes might be so fleeting; I wondered who was really ‘controlling’ my life or my time in this moment — me, or the dogs (or God) — and about whether CEOs or celebrities who think their time is valuable (based on $ per minute or whatever) conceptually ‘bill’ their dogs for this time, or pay others to do the work that is ‘beneath them.’ I like the idea that we humans get the name ‘human’ from the ground (humus) so actually no work, or all work, is really ‘beneath us’ and we’re meant to be ‘humble’ (also from humus). This moment being confronted with my mortality and the picking up of dog poo from the ground was grounding for me in a way I can’t quite explain but that stands out. Perhaps because in my anger — and I feel like it’s ok to get angry at dragons and the anger needs to go somewhere — in my anger I recognised the temptation to become like a dragon, but I decided I actually love my dogs and being angry at them for pooing in the yard was a bit stupid; so too was being angry at my kids for not picking up the poo. I chose, instead, to be angry at the dragon himself.
Cancer is such a picture of the problem the Bible links to the dragon’s entry into the story — the curse of sin and death. Cancer exists to eat and destroy; to extract and siphon off good nutrients in healthy bodies, and convert those nutrients to its own likeness; causing death and decay. Cancer sucks.
Cancer is a dragon.
I long for a time when this dragon is destroyed; not just in my body, but in the cosmos. And I want to line up behind the one who promises to destroy all dragons. I want my kids to do that too. And my church. And my community. And my medical team.
I was facing the dragon, and, on the whole, not giving way to despair.
I had my surgery two weeks ago — it was ‘successful’. I woke up to ‘no stoma’. The pain of laproscopic surgery mostly — it seems — comes in the form of referred pain in your shoulders because you have been inflated; this pain passed. Constant ‘low level’ wound pain will pass too. Eventually.
I had my two week follow up appointment from surgery earlier this week. I no longer, it seems, have cancer in my body — the swollen lymph nodes near the tumour and the other 17 they took to check showed no sign of cancer. This meant a restaging of PT3 PN0 PM0 — or stage 2, and a way better treatment pathway and prognosis. There’s always the chance it has fired off its tendrils in the form of little invisible dragons waiting to emerge elsewhere, and so I’ll enter this period of vigilance (and perhaps preventative chemotherapy).
I am counting my blessings.
One of the biggest ‘killers’ when it comes to this sort of diagnosis comes in the form of complications from ‘co-morbidities’. Since last September I have been on a deliberate (perhaps tumour assisted) weight loss journey. I wanted to prolong my ‘soccer career’ (such as it is). I ended the season with a torn hamstring and back pain (and a grand final victory) and those injuries and pains were both a function of middle age and being well and truly in the ‘obese’ weight category. I lost 22kg prior to my surgery; I had attributed some of the symptoms I was experiencing to a ‘low fibre’ diet and went to hospital for the colonoscopy expecting a diet change — but my weight loss, and desire to work that diet thing out were part of how the cancer was found, and also part of why everything treatment wise is in a lower risk category. This is quite amazing to me.
The tumour was 3mm from perforating the wall of my bowel; that’s a jump from ‘stage 2’ to ‘stage 4′ — and to a much riskier prognosis and treatment pathway. It was so close to perforating that it broke that last wall as the surgeons pulled it out of my body. It was also reasonably close to obstructing my bowel (again, a path to ’emergency’ rather than ‘elective’ surgery). A journal article from the 1980s suggests that aggressive bowel tumours grow 3mm or so in a month. This timing seems providential (and I have to balance this against ‘not getting cancer at all’ is also providential, and God would continue to be my shepherd and provider even if the worst case scenario had eventuated).
I don’t know what the future holds on this cancer journey; it seems — for the minute — this dragon has been slayed (slain?).
It may be that I spend some months later this year undergoing chemo, which may bring its own different despair and pain and misery. It may be that the dragon will re-emerge down the track and I will have to face it again. If not this dragon, then, some other dragon. It may be that I am cured already.
For now I’m pausing to be thankful; thankful for microscopic and milimetre sized mercies; thankful for small and large decisions in the last few months; thankful for the stories of others that prompted me to act, and to pray; thankful for the incredible public health system in Australia that means all this care from all these people has cost me nothing (I know, taxes), thankful for my friends and family who have pitched in to help through this time (my parents are about to arrive to provide all sorts of help at home for the second time in a fortnight), thankful for my church family and those who have stepped in to cover my tasks and to love and pray for our family, thankful for the visits and the phone calls, and the comments and the messages from so many of you, and thankful for my kids and Robyn for the way they have cared for me as we’ve faced the dragon together.
I am thankful that I did not give in to despair or self-pity because I am not alone, and did not feel alone.
I am thankful that it seems like the idea that character isn’t about ‘how you choose to act, or what you decided to do, in a crisis’ but ‘who you habitually become before the crisis’ seems to have worked out — not because I don’t have any sinful or dragony tendencies in this moment. I haven’t been or behaved perfectly — but because this moment too has been an opportunity to deliberately practice ‘habits of the heart’ for the next crisis, or the bigger dragons out there.
I am thankful that this period has revealed to me — and I hope to my kids most of all — that I really believe this stuff about God, and it really matters in these moments. It’s easy to give a kind of lip service to one’s allegiance when that fidelity isn’t being tested (or when you don’t notice how it is being tested in myriad little battles or choices or moments).
And ultimately, I am thankful that the Lord, my shepherd, is a slayer of dragons who will — no matter the outcome of my story in this body — return to make all things new; and to eradicate cancer and other dragons from the cosmos.
That is a good story.