Speaking of That

I am often asked to share “my story”. You know the one…. Healthy triathlon guy gets leukemia. Healthy triathlon guy gets treated and reaches remission. Healthy triathlon guy resumes racing. Healthy triathlon guy becomes a triathlon coach for Team in Training and an advocate for the disease. The end… err, no …. To be continued….

I have shared the details of that story and the many lives that have touched me, but I don’t always share all of the details. There are some aspects to my story that I rarely mention. It’s not that I am opposed to sharing, I just haven’t. Maybe some parts are a little too personal, but every once in a while I will throw this out there into the universe. It’s something that happened one night at home in between chemo cycles.

The Touch
In between rounds two and three of chemo, something truly remarkable happened. Let me preface this by saying that my religion and spirituality has always been a very personal thing with me. My beliefs are essentially free of boundaries and name tags. I do consider myself a spiritual person. Born, baptized and raised going to Presbyterian Church, but married into a Catholic family, and picked up a keen interest in many Eastern religions and Philosophies in college and along the way. My beliefs are my beliefs yet I’m not certain what “brand” to call them other than predominately Christian based.

I was reluctant to get this personal but I figure if I just put the facts out there, you can arrive at your own conclusions and determinations. But I need to disclaimer it first by saying there were many people who prayed very often and very hard for me, us, and my leukemia. All of their efforts are appreciated and I’m sure they all played a role in my positive outcome. However, there is one night that I feel is worthy of mention. On April 12th, my wife’s cousin Sharon and her husband John came to visit us.

The very brief background on Sharon is as follows: Sharon became very ill in the early 1990s with a condition that doctors simply could not get a handle on. She became bedridden, and wheelchair bound and was in excruciating pain. After many unsuccessful and futile conventional attempts with standard medical practices to try and diagnose and heal her, she finally turned to a healing prayer service. Immediately following one of these services, Sharon was on her feet and out of the chair. Within a week of attending this one particular service, Sharon was essentially cured and back to her normal self. Again, these are the facts; you arrive at your own conclusions.

Sharon and John came over to our house with the intention of praying for us and my disease. We spent some time getting caught up and hearing Sharon’s amazing story and then Sharon and John settled down next to MG and I and started to pray over us. The first rather unusual or out of the ordinary thing we noticed was that our one dog immediately came over and started licking the hand of Sharon and vocalizing in a way that wasn’t quite a bark, but more like a warning or that she wanted or sensed something. We had never seen or heard our dog behave like that in the past.

Shortly after that, Sharon placed her other hand on my forehead and continued to pray. This was “the touch” that did something to me. I immediately felt a combination of goose flesh and butterflies that originated in the pit of my stomach and radiated out to my extremities and through the top of my head. It seemed to last several minutes. And as this was happening my eyes suddenly began to tear up with no apparent advance emotion or warning. More like an involuntary direct response or reaction to something.

Shortly after that we ended our prayer. Remember, I am simply telling you exactly what happened. You are free to draw your own conclusion. And here is the kicker, from that day on; I saw accelerated improvement in my condition. Certain lymph nodes which had been stubbornly enlarged and had not yet responded to chemo were reduced to normal size in 3 days. My next blood draw was considered normal even for normal people. And the round of chemo that I had after that yielded even better results than the first two had. By this time, my doctor had considered my condition in a state of full remission.

Draw your own conclusions… I drew mine immediately following “The Touch”.