Aly's Fight Read online

  As Josh and I were leaving the oncologist’s office, a woman approached me as she had been following my blog online. It was like I was a celebrity! She had been diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer while she was pregnant. With tears in her eyes, she was able to tell me how much my blog impacted her and gave her inspiration. Once again I was learning how important it had been to share my story online. What she didn’t know was the news I had just received. I was able to give her the biggest hug and tell her she was the first person to hear I was cancer-free! Her whole face lit up, and she told us how grateful she was to hear our story. Knowing that miracles do happen, that God truly does heal His people, meant the world to her in that moment. I believe God put that woman in front of me at the perfect time to remind me to never stop sharing my story, and to shout it from the rooftops if necessary.

  When God works a miracle in our lives, we have a duty to share it with those around us. It truly may mean the difference between life and death for those still struggling. Looking back on April 30, 2012, I’m not only thankful for the incredible news I got from the doctor; I’m also grateful for that immediate opportunity to give someone hope by speaking of God’s healing power. He had given me the words of life, and in His name, my life was saved. “LORD my God, I called out to you for help, and you healed me” (Psalm 30:2). He really did it! Praise God!

  CANCER’S SUCKER PUNCH

  —JOSH—

  I can’t even begin to describe how I felt when I got that doctor’s report. We had desperately prayed for good news at every step of this journey, but it seemed like every doctor’s appointment only took us deeper down the cancer pit. But now my wife was cancer-free.

  I would love to say our cancer battle ended for good after that doctor’s appointment, but Aly’s fight wasn’t quite over yet. There were still two big hurdles in front of us. As Aly said, she still had to go through six weeks of radiation as planned. And there was also the matter of her breast reconstruction. Little did we know that two months of intense radiation would be the easy part!

  We had about a month “off” from worrying about surgeries, tests, treatments, and commutes to Houston before Aly had to report for radiation. This phase of treatment would take two months, so we relocated to Houston for the summer of 2012. Cyd had friends from college, Lance and Tammy Stanfill, who live in Houston, and they became what we refer to as our “Houston family.” We lived with them during that summer, and that was one of the most unforgettable summers of our lives for many reasons. Even though we had been through nearly six months of chemotherapy and I knew how horrible cancer treatment could be, I was still surprised by what I saw during Aly’s radiation treatment. The burns on her skin were awful. She looked like she had third-degree burns all over her chest. I had the same thought I’d had so often during chemo: How is this supposed to help her?

  As her husband and champion, it was hard for me to sit by and watch her go off to essentially experience torture. Aly, however, was amazing. She was her typical “get it done” self and rallied through every treatment, no matter how much it hurt. She demonstrated the most beautiful, rock-solid faith the whole time. She had believed for a healing miracle, and God had given it to her. If putting up with a summer of radiation treatments was part of the deal, she was willing do it.

  We still managed to have some fun that summer, though. The Stanfills are forever a part of our family, and we can never thank them enough for opening their home to us. We also welcomed visitors as our friends and family came to spend time with us in Houston, and Aly and I spent a ton of time together talking about life and getting a vision for what our cancer-free future would look like. She still had several more surgeries before then, though.

  After radiation came reconstruction, and that did not go well. She was rushed in for two different emergency surgeries following her main reconstruction procedure, and all this trauma took a toll on my wife. As much as she likes to take charge and attack problems head-on, the reconstruction phase brought her to the point of complete helplessness again. (Aly will talk more about these surgeries and complications later in the book.) I honestly didn’t realize how painful this part of the process would be for her. Neither of us did. We simply were not expecting such hard times to continue after she was declared cancer-free. We thought we were almost off this roller-coaster ride when the oncologist gave us the good news, but the reconstruction surgeries took more out of Aly than anything else we had experienced.

  After one of these surgeries, Aly really needed a shower. She felt gross, and she knew she would feel better after washing off. However, she couldn’t walk, lift her arms, or do much of anything other than lie in bed. So a nurse had to come in and bathe her. I tried to help as much as I could, but I will never forget Aly being so helpless while a nurse washed her. I knew Aly was mortified, and once again we had to keep our eyes on the goal: a healthy life that shines the light of Christ.

  We prayed that these hardships would bring the perseverance promised in Scripture. Remembering the night Aly told me flatly that she needed me to believe with her, I was dead set on focusing on her complete recovery. I realized that it is one thing to read and believe the Bible in a vacuum, but it’s an entirely different level of faith to believe God’s Word of healing when you’re watching a nurse bathe your weak, helpless, and weeping wife.

  JOSH’S CANCER TREATMENT

  Watching Aly—the love of my life—go through such horrors and being completely unable to help her or take the burden from her destroyed me on many levels. While she felt helpless to do things for herself, I felt… powerless. This was devastating to me as a man. As she fought for her life, I started to realize that her cancer treatment was changing me as well as changing her. It was forcing me to take a good, hard look at myself and the faith I clung to. Now, looking back over the past seven-plus years since her initial diagnosis, I can say without a doubt that today I am a much different man. God and cancer changed me through and through, and that transformation really came into focus as I watched the nurse bathe Aly.

  There were a handful of moments throughout our journey that seemed surreal, and watching a total stranger wash my wife’s body seemed like the ultimate violation of personal space. It was a powerful reminder that, as active as we’d been in attacking her cancer, none of this was in our control. This wasn’t just pain. This was the pinnacle of humiliation and helplessness. More than that, I came to realize this was a picture of our complete surrender to God—only I hadn’t surrendered everything to Him yet.

  I said cancer had changed me, but I hadn’t allowed God to fully change me yet. I was still trying to control things, primarily our finances. Even as Aly struggled to recover from her surgeries, I was nursing new business ideas and financial opportunities. I was worried about jobs, paychecks, and medical bills. There was no doubt God was telling me to stay in the job I was in and to spend every other ounce of energy caring for and spending time with Aly. He had big plans for our family; only He knew what awaited us on the other side of cancer. I believe He wanted me focused on Aly and our marriage in these critical years, fighting not only for Aly’s life but also for our future together. And yet I kept chasing after other things in my mind, chasing rabbits I know weren’t from God. I realized God had given me the ability to lead Aly through this; I just wasn’t giving Him the ability to lead me.

  God broke me through Aly’s cancer. He broke my self-reliance. He broke my preoccupation with finances. He broke the plans I had set for myself and my family. And then He stepped into that brokenness and started showing me what He had planned for us. I didn’t know exactly what the future held for us, what the rest of Aly’s fight would be like, whether we’d be able to have children, or what our careers would look like. But I did know He was already there, shaping and holding our future in His hands—the same hands that had healed my wife of life-threatening cancer. If I could trust my wife’s life to those nail-scarred hands, I knew I could trust our finances to them too.

  I wish I co
uld say this was an overnight change for me, bringing me new faith and confidence like a light in the darkness. But it wasn’t. It was a start, though. God had broken me, picked up the pieces, and started building something new. And I knew He would finish His work in His time.

  —ALY—

  Watching the transformation happen in my husband was truly incredible. People come up to me all the time and say, “I knew Josh in high school, and he was a nice guy,” or “Josh used to coach my son in basketball. He was great.”

  Almost every time I’ll say something like, “Yeah, he was pretty great back then—but you should meet him now! He’s a completely different person.” Seeing what God has done in and through him has been an unexpected blessing of my cancer.

  Since then, brokenness has been a common topic for us, especially for Josh. He’s become passionate about sharing his story of brokenness to others and explaining how God has built an amazing, unexpected new life from the shattered pieces.

  One night as we were lying in bed, Josh was going on and on in one of his many minisermons about brokenness when I stopped him mid- sentence and said, “Josh, do you realize you are healed? I know you were broken before God and you continue to be broken, but do you know you are also healed?” Once again he responded to my gentle rebuke with silence. I could tell I had spun his mind off in a different direction, and I was curious where it would go.

  —JOSH—

  Aly has a way of hitting me in the gut with truth. She was right. I had spent so much time focused on my brokenness that I hadn’t paid much attention to the fact that God had healed me. Yes, God had broken me, and I rejoiced in that. He broke me of some patterns and thoughts that would have led me far away from where He wanted me to be. But Aly was showing me that God didn’t leave me broken. He took those shattered pieces of who I was and used them to make me into a new creation in Christ. From that point on, I kept telling people about the power of brokenness, but I also emphasized how that’s only half the conversation. The other side of the coin is the healing that comes after the brokenness. That’s the real power—the ongoing daily cycle of brokenness and healing. I believe that’s how God continually molds and refines us into the men and women He’s called us to be. That’s the message I now spread every chance I get. That’s what God taught me during my cancer treatment.

  CHAPTER 5

  CANCER’S AFTERMATH

  —ALY—

  I talked to many cancer survivors while I was fighting my battle, and I was shocked to hear them say that one of the hardest parts of the whole journey for them was getting back to life after cancer. Like I said in the previous chapter, I always thought life would go back to normal at that point. I remember thinking, What in the world are they talking about? When I’m cancer-free, I’ll shout from the rooftops! It’ll be the best time of my life! I believed that with my whole heart, but once I got there myself, I quickly understood cancer’s aftermath and what it can do to you if you don’t keep up your guard.

  When my doctor told me I was cancer-free, she basically discharged me. I was prepared to keep coming back for regular checkups, but she only needed to see me every three months. Otherwise, she said to call with any questions or concerns. Before she let me go, however, she made sure I understood that my type of cancer had a high likelihood of recurrence, especially within the first two years. So she stressed to me how important it was to let her know if anything felt… odd. I had no idea how much that statement would affect my life over the following years.

  As we left the hospital that day, I was on cloud nine. I was alive! I was going to live! Life was going to be (somewhat) normal again! It’s one thing to believe you will be healed, as I’d done throughout the whole ordeal. It was something else entirely to see it actually come to pass. Thank You, Jesus!

  —JOSH—

  As we left that day, my biggest thought was, Well, what do we do now? We’d been prepared for more treatments and another phase of cancer life, but instead, the journey just stopped. Aly was cancer-free. Everything we’d been praying for and believing for had come to pass. What now?

  When we were living with cancer, we did everything we could to make life feel normal. But it wasn’t normal. At all. Cancer changes everything. It wrecks your plans and dreams. It causes crazy emotions and stretches your faith in all directions. Looking back, it was kind of silly for us to expect our life to snap back to what we once considered normal after Aly got the all clear from her doctor. Plus, with the benefit of time, we’re now grateful that God allowed our plans to be wrecked because He had something so much better in store for us. We couldn’t see that at the time, though. In that moment, trying to adjust to life after cancer was harder than we ever dreamed.

  NEXT STOP: MORE SURGERIES

  —ALY—

  The next stop after completing all my cancer treatment was reconstructive surgery. We’ve already mentioned that this process did not go well. The surgeries were eventually successful, but I had issues with my tissue expanders, the devices put under the chest muscle to prepare for the implants that would be placed later. Those issues led me into several emergency surgeries that kept me in near-constant pain for nine months. Everything hurt. My chest. My arms. My back. The pain and swelling were worse when lying flat, and I couldn’t even think about lying on my stomach, which was my favorite way to sleep premastectomy, and I had to sleep sitting up for several months.

  All that pain and trouble took a terrible toll on me. I remember the doctors reassuring me that I would be glad I was doing this reconstructive phase, but I had moments when I didn’t care if I had a flat chest forever; I just wanted to stop hurting and feel normal.

  It didn’t help that I was in my midtwenties. It was the period of my life when all my friends were getting married, having children, and experiencing their happiest moments. But I was stuck in bed, propped up on a million pillows and emptying surgical drains every hour. I was so tired. Tired of the pain and surgeries. Tired of trying to sleep sitting up. Tired of not being able to sleep on my stomach, which I hadn’t done in a year. Tired of not being able to cuddle with my husband. Tired of being a patient.

  Finally, nearly a year after I’d been declared cancer-free, all the reconstructive surgeries were over. However, things still weren’t normal the way we had hoped. Despite the great work of my doctors, my breasts looked much different than they did before cancer and my mastectomy. I was told they’d look somewhat normal when all was said and done, but they weren’t normal for me. Because so much tissue had been removed during my mastectomy, there wasn’t enough left to support my previous breast size. As a result, the doctors had to make my reconstructed breasts much smaller than they were originally.

  So not only did I have to get used to implants, but I also had to get used to the fact that I looked so different. I wondered if I would ever feel like myself again, and if I didn’t, how would I deal with that? I didn’t really know the answer. I had to trust God with each step. What I did know was that I was cancer-free and there were no more surgeries in my future. We felt like we had finally climbed over a huge hump and that life was going to calm down a little bit.

  IS THE CANCER BACK?

  —JOSH—

  We were so relieved when Aly’s surgeries were over. After a nonstop roller-coaster ride for the past year and a half, we were ready for a break. Before we could really relax, though, Aly started having new pain. It started in her leg and hips. The doctor had warned us to pay attention to anything that felt off, so we weren’t sure what to think of these new symptoms. Aly had been in so much pain for so long, it became hard to figure out what pain was new and what was old. This was different, though.

  She started complaining to me about hip and back pain, and I had to be extremely careful in my reactions. I knew from experience that if I seemed overly concerned, Aly could start freaking out. But if I didn’t seem concerned enough, Aly might think I didn’t believe she was really having these symptoms.

  The doctor’s warning kept ringin
g in our ears, so we filtered every ache and pain through the lens of, Is this the cancer coming back? We made a decision not to live in fear, but that is easier said than done when Aly was supposed to be highly sensitive to any new pain, and she was having many new pains! It really messed with our minds in ways we weren’t expecting. It’s like we got off one horrible ride and climbed right back onto another. We were not prepared for the aftermath of cancer at all.

  —ALY—

  It was so hard not to believe that the cancer had come back in a different part of my body. I clung to Nahum 1:9: “Affliction shall not rise up the second time” (KJV). While I believed this and trusted that God had healed me, I knew others whose cancer had returned. That made it difficult for me to fully believe, but I kept fighting for my faith. As always, I prayed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). During these two weeks of struggling with this new hip and back pain, I felt like I was having to settle a key question in my spirit once and for all: Am I scared of cancer? As I was crying to a friend about this, she said (pretty frankly), “Aly, you can’t be scared of cancer. God is bigger than cancer.” I know that may sound like a simple statement, but it made me realize how much fear I’d allowed cancer to cram into my life. I didn’t want to be a person of fear; I’m a person of faith!

  I spent so much time during this ordeal reading the psalms. Having fought this battle for so long, I felt a close connection to David as he continually cried out to God. He always seemed to be in trouble, facing insurmountable odds and desperately in need of rescue. One of my favorite passages during this time was Psalm 3:

  LORD, how many are my foes! How many rise up against me! Many are saying of me, “God will not deliver him.” But you, LORD, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high. I call out to the LORD, and he answers me from his holy mountain. I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the LORD sustains me. I will not fear though tens of thousands assail me on every side. Arise, LORD! Deliver me, my God! Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked. From the LORD comes deliverance. May your blessing be on your people.