My heart sank and my head went suddenly quiet as I found her kidney with the ultrasound probe. Time seemed to pause in the little ultrasound room. It was all I could do to keep from crying. She had severe hydronephrosis on the left side, a consequence of the large cervical cancer that I had discovered just a few minutes prior. I had hoped that maybe it was still early enough that surgery might benefit her. It was almost a minute before I could begin to tell her what I had found.
Unfortunately, stage IV metastatic cancer is not uncommon here. Without routine screenings for cancers (colonoscopy for colon cancer, Pap smears for cervical cancer, mammograms for breast cancer), societal knowledge of cancers that might lead to seeking care earlier (testicular and breast cancer especially) or routine interventions (hepatitis B vaccination-now becoming more common), cancer is often only found after it has metastasized or become too large for intervention. And, unfortunately, some of these patients are young, as Susan was (name changed).
We sat there together in the semi-darkness after I had told her what I had found. She saw my grief and knew the seriousness of the diagnosis. After some time, I began to explore more about her life. She had at one time been a Christian, grown up in the home of a pastor. But she had had a difficult life and had left her faith in God. She was currently in her 4th marriage despite being in her late 20s/early 30s. I shared the love and the hope I had found in Jesus, despite my mistakes, and how there was always a way back to God’s open arms. She began to cry too as we prayed, and she reopened that door in her life to know Jesus again.
Earlier that day I had felt the same sinking feeling as I palpated the mass overtaking Wendy’s neck and clavicle (name changed). The mass had started in her left breast but had obviously spread. As I looked at her chest x-ray, the small sliver of hope I had vanished with the metastases in her lungs. She had a one-year-old at home and was still breast feeding, part of why she hadn’t come in sooner for evaluation. I was able to connect her with Dr Matt, one of our physicians who has started a palliative care ministry, where he provides spiritual as well as physical care in the homes of patients dying from various diseases that we are unable to cure.
Days like this can feel heavy. Patients shouldn’t be dying from these diseases at such a young age. But there is still hope in these black circumstances. In the midst of the brokenness of cancer, Jesus met these two women with hope. In a book I have mentioned before, Promises in the Dark, Eric McLaughlin talks about a phrase from a hymn, the “fullness of redemption.” So often here we see only brokenness and small glimpses of redemption. But in time, Jesus is going to bring everything to complete redemption, our bodies, souls, relationships, world. And there will be a fullness to that work. I’m glad that Susan and Wendy will be able to see it.
