My dad's cancer is back.

An abnormal accumulation of fluid in the lining of one lung has proven to be 1.7 liters of cancer soup. Doctors remain at a loss as to how it formed.

Today my 10 days shy of 77 years old father will under go a Positron Emission Tomography scan. Following an overnight fast (always touchy for insulin dependent diabetics) this morning they have injected him with radioactive flourine 18, a radioactive sugar. After an hour, they started a full body scan--which is almost completed by the time I right this at about 10 am. Preliminary results will show if there are concentrations of the isotope at cancer hotspots in the body. More detailed analysis won't be finished until Monday...the day before the family start's arriving in Hometown for the annual family reunion at my parents'. I'll arrive on Wednesday.

Dad had been cancer free for about 17 months, since the surgery to remove his stomach and a part of his esophagus and the two months of chemo that followed it in the Spring of 2005.

Dad's been through the ringer these past 10 years...prostate cancer, cataracts, angioplasty and stints, the stomach cancer, becoming insulin dependent (he's been Type II for years), second round of angioplasty and stints, and now a mysterious and (we fear) extensive recurrence of the cancer they told us would have a fifty percent recurrence rate in five years.

I'd be lying if I said Dad has always been a good sport about it. He hasn't. He tends to be fatalistic, but he's always been a fighter, always been a person who wrapped his brain around the problem and went after a solution. That's the dad who talked to me yeasterday. 'Here's the situation, here's the plan, we work the plan.'


He's funny in a way. He pretends to be this big tower of strength, but in many ways, he's a big baby. He is utterly incapable of hiding his true feelings (whatever he may think) and gets grouchy and pouty like a six year old when he's not feeling well. (But then who doesn't?)

Mom is (in his presence) eternally stoic, but secretly terrified. My siblings are still in shock a bit.

I find I'm in a weird place. I'm sad, but hopeful. I'm worried about how he is feeling and about how everyone is doing and how they are coping, and about being 1200 miles away, but I'm not really scared about what might happen.

Is that wrong? Am I numb? Is my confidence in the ultimate Shalom of God so ingrained that I can remain in this relatively non-anxious place....or am I just a heartless jerk?

Or have I just been down this road so many times with so many people that I know what will be will be and I know my job is to pray and to be loving and supportive whatever happens?

The sermon on Sunday, based on Hannah, is about gratitude...about how prayer and the ackknowledgement of prayer can, if we let it, be the beginning of peace of mind...even when we don't know what comes next...how confidence in God is different than confidence that things will go the way I want them to....I started writing it two hours before the call about the new diagnosis.

You'll forgive me, I hope, but sometimes the Holy Spirit can be a real bitch....or a complete life-saver. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.

I solicit your prayers for Dad, for Mom...for all of us.

Peace...