#49: Join me as I interview my husband Dave and share our personal journey through cancer and celebrate a significant milestone: Dave's five years cancer-free. After facing the challenges of diagnosis, treatment, and recovery, we'll reflect on the faith in God and resilience that carried us through the toughest moments. We discuss how our experience has not only strengthened our relationship but has also allowed us to support others facing similar battles. We'll explore the emotional highs and lows of our journey and the importance of community and God's guidance during this season of our life. This touching episode is a testament to hope, healing, and the power of prayer. Our hope is that it will you to trust in God's plan amidst adversity.

Let's go to the show.

Key Take-aways:

• 00:09 - A New Beginning: Celebrating Freedom from Cancer
• 04:32 - The Journey Begins: A Health Crisis Unfolds
• 12:35 - Facing the Diagnosis
• 28:34 - The Power of Prayer and Healing
• 35:12 - The Journey of Hope and Loss
• 43:12 - The Journey of Healing and Support
• 51:01 - A New Chapter of Hope and Healing

Resources:

• The Beauty in Letting Go by Angee Wiser Robertson

Heavenly Position Guidance Challenge:

For this week's Heavenly Position System Challenge, take out your journal and is there something that you're facing? Is there something that you're struggling with that's huge, like an illness? I want to encourage you to go to God and talk to Him about it. Ask God your questions. Wait for His response.

Make sure you don't miss a future episode! You can subscribe to receive email notifications when new episodes release. Visit spiritledlifepodcast.com to sign up.

Want to support this podcast? We have Spirit Led Life Gear available. Everything from hats, t-shirts, mugs to tote bags and anything in-between.

Want to connect with Angee? You can find her on Instagram @angeewrobertson or at angeerobertson.com

I'm Angie Robertson and you're listening to the Spirit Led Life podcast, episode 49.

I am doing a very special interview.

I'm interviewing my husband Dave.

Just yesterday we had his last cancer exam and now he has been medically deemed cancer free.

And I thought it would be a great way to end the on this high that we've had.

We've been celebrating all year with all the milestones that we've had.

If you've been listening to the show, you know what those are.

But I thought this would be a great episode to hear his story, what God did with both of us through this journey and how he used this journey.

So I am excited for you to hear this episode today.

If you have somebody in your life that is dealing with a illness, a terminal illness even, I highly encourage you to share this episode with them.

So let's go to the show.

Welcome to the show.

If you are new here, I am glad you are joining us.

On this podcast.

We explore who God is so we can know who he has made us to be and learn to live our lives by the Holy Spirit.

Before we get into today's interview, I want to encourage you to follow, share and leave a comment about this podcast.

It would mean so much to me if you would just take a few minutes to go into your podcast player and click the follow link if you haven't already.

You can also share this podcast with a friend who might be interested in this topic and who doesn't want to learn to live by the Holy Spirit.

One other way you can support this podcast is by leaving a kind review when you like, share and leave a comment.

It helps others to find this podcast and we are building a community to learn how to live our lives by the Holy Spirit.

Thank you again for taking the time to do that.

I really appreciate it.

Today's episode is very special.

It's probably going to sound a little different than our normal episodes.

It's going to be a little more echoey because I'm interviewing my husband Dave.

We have one microphone that we're going to be sharing between us and I had to put us in a room outside of my studio that would allow us to be able to do this interview.

And so it's going to be a little more echoey even though I've tried my hardest to keep that from happening.

But I wanted to do this interview.

I thought it was super important to end the year we've had such a Great year.

If you've listened to past episodes, you know that this year Dave and I celebrated a lot of milestones.

And to end the year, we're celebrating his five years cancer free.

And he actually November 1st was the actual date, but we couldn't get his final doctor's appointment until December.

But I absolutely want to introduce my husband, Dave to you.

And he is.

We've been married 25 years, love of my life.

And we have been through a lot of highs and a lot of lows in our marriage, and this one by far took the cake for sure.

And we're just going to share with you the journey.

But first, I'll let him say hello.

Hello, everybody.

So that is Dave.

I do want to preface that he has had oral cancer, so he's missing half of his tongue.

It's been rebuilt, but he doesn't have the same capabilities of his tongue like you and I would or any normal person would.

So it might be a little challenging to understand him.

I'm going to make sure that he enunciates very well and then certainly make sure that it's as clear as possible.

And if I feel like I can't understand something he's saying, I will ask him to repeat it, but you won't know that.

We'll edit it so it.

It all works together.

Good.

So I just wanted to.

To put that little disclaimer out there that, you know, he's gonna.

It's gonna be a little bit of a challenge for him to talk, but I think God will use this and get past that also.

One other thing I forgot to mention is that it may sound like he's sniffing, but he actually does this slurping because he doesn't swallow the way that we normally do.

So anyway, so he will.

You'll hear him slurping throughout the podcast.

It's just.

That's how he swallows.

So just giving you another little disclaimer.

So you're.

You're all set and you understand what's going on.

I guess we'll start from the beginning.

So let's talk about.

I started noticing that Dave was sleeping a lot more like taking naps in the afternoon.

I mean, you know, who doesn't love a good nap in the afternoon?

But it was excessive and he seemed to always be fatigued.

Do you want to say anything about that?

I do.

Normally I work in the yard and come in and shower and then eat lunch and I have them take about an hour to, you know, rest, but it just seemed like it was hours, and I just.

Was just drained and.

But I didn't think anything about it.

But then move ahead.

You know, it was a little stressful, but I was a little short with Angie.

You know, I thought maybe it was just the stress.

But then she went out of town in April, and that's when I found out it was a mass in my mouth and blood was coming out from it, and it hurt.

And for the next month, I hid from her.

I was in complete denial and freaked out.

I kind of knew what it was.

I just didn't want any more look at it, but it hurt.

And so it was a little bit harder for me to eat, and I was a lot shorter.

And Angie would ask me a question, and I was like, mm.

And no real definitive answer.

And she was worried about that.

She thought maybe I was hiding something.

Well, I can kind of fill in a little bit of the gap there on that.

In that.

Yeah.

When we moved in March, he was very short.

And I kind of wrote it off as we're moving and he's under a lot of pressure, but he's never short.

And I found it very.

I was taken aback by it because that's just not his behavior.

And I kind of put a little mental note in the background about it.

But again, I kind of wrote it off as, you know, we're moving.

And then when I came back from my trip in April, and he wouldn't talk, so he would give me just, mm, mm.

And it was like one word answers or just, you know, making, you know, mm noises.

It wasn't actual sentences.

And I thought that that was kind of strange as well.

And I thought, well, gosh, is something else going on?

Is he having an affair?

Like, you know, your mind just starts to go crazy because when your spouse's behavior is abnormal, then you start to think.

At least I do.

I mean, well, like, I have experience in this.

But anyway, like, I did.

I.

My mind started going crazy, and of course, the enemy is whispering in my ear all sorts of things.

So that's.

I kind of was starting to put a lot of little red flags in my mind.

Yeah.

For the next month, I was, you know, loki, and just what do I do and how to handle this?

But I never talked to her and jump ahead till about end of May.

Finally said one bed in the parking lot, what is going on?

I finally told her.

And I was at.

When he.

Well, before that, you know, things were kind of starting to build up and I was on a call with a team, which I've shared this story before.

I was on a call with a team and one of our team members.

When we were ending the call, she was just about in tears and she had to excuse herself and she got off the call and then she texted me right after and she said, do you have a few minutes to talk?

And I said, sure.

And so I got on the phone with her and she was like, something is going on with Dave.

My spirit is so grieved right now.

She said something.

It's health related.

Something is going on and you need to.

It's.

God is like saying this is urgent.

It freaked me out.

Of course.

Then that's when I started to really pay attention to what was going on.

I started noticing, noticing he had lost a lot of weight.

When we were brushing our teeth, we have side by side sinks.

And I happened to look over as he was brushing his teeth and when he spit out, he spit out blood.

And for those of you who are squeamish, I'm sorry if that made you a little squeamish.

I probably should have put a disclaimer at the beginning that we might talk a little bit about medical things, but we won't get, we're not going to get overly grotesque in all of this.

But anyway, so I started to really pay attention and then jump ahead to when he was talking about in May.

We were driving down the road, we were going, I think to a doctor's appointment, like an eye doctor appointment.

And I finally pulled over and I was like, I am not moving this car any further until you tell me what is going on.

And then that's when he shared that something was.

He had something in his mouth.

And then I was like, do you, are you worried that it's cancer?

Because he was a dipper.

So he would dip chewing tobacco, like not chewing.

What is it called?

Dip.

It was dip.

I don't know what else you would call it.

And so he did that most of his life.

And so that was, that's obviously when you do that, that is one of the side effects that can happen that you're, you're, you know, dealing with is you can get oral cancer.

And he happened to be in that statistic that gets it whenever he said, yes, I have something in my mouth.

When we got home, I looked in his mouth and I was absolute mortified at what I saw.

And it was just a mass on his tongue.

It was huge.

I didn't.

We had just moved, so I had no idea what to do or who to call.

We didn't have.

I did have a dentist that I had made an appointment with.

I couldn't when we first moved here.

I'm very, very cognizant of my dental care.

As I've shared before.

I've always had an issue with, like, buildup in my teeth, and it's, you know, caused a lot of problems over the years.

So I knew the first thing I wanted to do when we moved here was get a dentist immediately because I was coming up due for a cleaning.

So I had reached out to a dentist and I couldn't get in.

And we had moved here in March.

I couldn't get in until September.

But I went ahead and made an appointment.

I know when I go to the dentist now, see, let's back up a little bit and say that Dave hadn't been going to the dentist on a regular basis.

So again, if he had been going to the dentist, they would have caught this early on.

And I'm not.

I'm not throwing shade at Dave.

I'm just letting you know that where I'm going with this is that when you do go to the dentist, they do oral cancer screening.

And so I knew that, and so I thought, okay, well, then that's.

I'm going to go to the dentist.

That's the first thing I knew to do was to just contact my dentist and say, hey, look, we just moved here.

I'm a new patient.

I have an appointment that's in September.

However, my husband is experiencing what we believe is oral cancer.

They got us in right away, and they referred us to an oral surgeon who happened to be right next door to them.

And that oral surgeon got us in.

I think it was like the next day or that same day.

Same day, yeah.

And they did a biopsy on Dave.

So then he.

He took Dave back.

And while he took Dave back and they did the biopsy after he was done, he came back out and I was in the lobby, and I'll never forget this, this day.

But he said, well, I'm not going to lie to you.

It's not looking good.

It's probably cancer, and it's probably pretty severe.

And I.

My first thing out of my mouth was, is he going to die from this?

And he said, well, he probably.

He possibly could.

I lost it.

And I'm like in the lobby with people sitting all around, and I am doing everything I can not to completely and utterly ball up in a Fetal position, on the floor, crying.

So I kept my composure as much as I could.

He left, and I went out to the car, and I was so uncontrollably sobbing, and I didn't know who to call.

Everybody I would try to call.

Nobody was answering.

And I was.

I felt so alone in that moment.

And all I could do was cry out to God.

And I was like, God, you.

I need your presence right now, right here.

I need to feel you.

I need to.

I need you right now, like.

And I know that God put me in that position because he wanted me to cry out to him, and he wanted him to be the first line of defense.

So I was able to compose myself.

And the last thing I wanted to do was to go back into that room to collect Dave and him see on my face the fear that I had.

So I decided to push that aside and not let him, because I knew if I.

If he saw it, then he would get into a place of fear.

And that is the last thing I wanted him to do.

He needed to be strong through all of this.

And I really wanted us to lean on God through all of this.

And so that was what I did.

And so when he came out, I didn't tell him at all what the doctor had said.

I didn't say a word.

I didn't.

I just.

You know, we would get the biopsy results, and they got the biopsy results in less than 24 hours, and it came back as squamous cell carcinoma.

And then he immediately was up online, the best surgeon in this area, and happened to be in Jacksonville, where we just moved from.

And we didn't know there was a sham there.

We would be 11 years, never move.

It was a sham.

And this particular bopper actually trains other people.

And so people flying from all over the world to learn how to do my type of surgery.

We made an appointment with them, and a week or two later, we went shoe.

You know, see him.

That put us in a really small room, and we were talking to him, but he had all this boppers, fellows he's training.

They all pile in the room, and it's, like, not very big.

And then he proceeds to tell us what the survey's all about, what he's going to do.

They ask me, what hand do I write with?

I said, my right hand.

I thought that was odd.

But then they told me what we were going to do, and then that's that.

So we left the doctor's office and went back to the car.

And Angie goes, well, how do you feel?

I said, right now I just want to put a gun in my head and blow my brains out.

And she freaked out.

I said, no, I'm not going to do that.

But that's the way I feel right now.

I was just overwhelmed fear and didn't know what to expect.

But then we drove home.

And then that point when we got home and before my surgery, my wife really amped up her game big time and continued after the surgery.

But that moment at about a month, and that's the worst pain I ever felt in my life.

I was on fentanyl packs and hydrocolone pill and that barely had it at bay.

And I was ready to do it now.

I mean, why have a weight?

But I high praise for my wife.

She has a book, the Power of a Plain Wife.

She prayed on me every, every day and she just amped up her game and she was trying to run a business at the same time.

I couldn't do anything.

I just sat on couch and, you know, slept.

That's all I could do.

And then we finally surgery day came.

My birthday, my 50th birthday was on July 10th.

My surgery was on July 18th.

Wow.

Wow.

Fun.

That's a fun birthday to celebrate.

We went and had my surgery.

Yeah, There was about a month from the time that we got diagnosed to before he could have his surgery.

And he was in so much pain.

I've never seen him in anybody I've loved in that much pain.

And it is the hardest thing.

I'm about to tear up now saying it.

It is hard to watch somebody you love so much be in that much pain.

And there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Absolutely nothing.

Except cry out to God and ask him to do something.

And so I, like Dave said, I got that book, the Power of a Praying Wife.

I've had that book for years.

I mean, decades.

And I got that book out and I just started praying and I would.

Dave would lay his head in my lap and I would just start praying prayers out of that book over him.

Yeah, like I said, he was just in so much pain and just praying and crying out to God.

And then before my surgery, I was like, am I going to buy from this in midstream?

I'll tell you what, this gave me hope.

It really, really supercharged me.

Is as you pray a day going by and Ross said, no, he's not gonna die.

When we got the diagnosis, we came home.

I do wanna back up and say this.

I remember sitting in the living room and both of us sitting on the couch, and we were just like, what are you gonna.

I mean, what.

What is gonna happen?

Are you gonna die?

And we were bawling, and you were like, I don't wanna die.

And I was like, I don't want you to die.

And we were.

We just, like, had a complete meltdown and just in each other's arms and just loved each other and consoled each other in that time.

And I'll never forget that, because that was probably one of my biggest fears in life, was in my mind, coming true, and that was losing Dave.

And at the same time, it was like, okay, I can't live in this fear.

I can't stay in this place of fear.

And I'm gonna find out, what does God say about it?

Because let's go to the source.

You know, let's.

Let's talk to him about it and find out.

And so I did.

I'll read my little journal entry here that Dave was just alluding to.

I wrote, I've been avoiding you.

Jesus.

I know there's moments when I have total strength, and then moments like now I'm weak.

Bottom line, I don't want to lose David.

I just need reassurance.

I won't.

He's my best friend, the closest thing to having you walk the earth with me.

I'm sorry if I took that for granted or complained too much.

I love him, and I want to journey the rest of life with him.

Not alone.

You say it is good for man to not be alone.

You made him a helpmate.

Dave's my helpmate.

You made each of us for each other.

You brought us together.

You told me he was my husband.

And then this is where God stepped in.

And I allowed him to just talk to me and let me back up and say I don't share.

I haven't shared this story very often, especially publicly like this, in five years.

I was afraid that if it didn't happen that it would make people think God was a liar, but when, in fact, it could have been something I misheard.

But now that we're five years out, I feel utterly confident in sharing what he said to me.

I felt confident anyway.

But now that we're five years out, I feel like I can really share it.

But this is what God said to me.

He said, he's not going to die.

Let him experience this.

Be by his side.

Support him.

Love him.

Don't protect him.

I am doing a new work.

Let me have my way he will be fine.

He will be triumphant.

It isn't going to be easy.

I've got you.

I've got.

I know you're worried.

Don't be.

I'm covering you.

Be the warrior.

Angie.

I know you love me.

I am not testing you.

I don't need you to prove anything.

Settle your spirit.

Remember I am being gentle with you.

The attacks are going to come strong as you put out a ripple.

You've made a declaration and an enemy doesn't like it.

I will always protect you.

That is my promise.

This is another layer of experiencing my love.

I love you so much.

Hang in there.

I got you.

You're my daughter.

And when I tell you that when I got that, that meant everything to me.

That was my promise and my hope that I could cling to from him.

And I knew from that moment forward that I.

This.

We've got this.

And I knew no matter how hard it got, how much pain Dave was in, that he was going to be a triumphant in the end.

And I did do remember sharing this with somebody and I remember their response to it kind of was negative and I.

It caused me to question it for a while and I just kept clinging to it and I kept going back to God and asking him and he kept reminding me over and over and he ended up giving me.

I'm doing a new thing.

Don't you perceive it?

I clung to that.

And when he gave me that promise, I knew that we were going to make it through this.

Once I heard that, that changed everything.

I was looking at Beth Baum and Barrel.

But once I heard that, it gave me hope, it gave me a fight.

And moving forward we were changed.

The whole attitude and the atmosphere until surgery day.

And that gave me energy to fight.

I'll never forget that.

I don't have tattoos, but I didn't want to put that on my arm somewhere.

Somewhere.

It was a promise.

We never did look on Google about the surgery and what they're doing and actually watch it.

And I'm glad we didn't because I just went in there wherever the box was seen to do.

I was letting them do it.

I mean I didn't care.

I knew I was going to live and I just deal with it.

Wanted me to get done for time's sake.

I don't want to get too.

There's so much that we could talk about and this could end up being like a three hour episode but you know, we don't want to do that.

Obviously Dave made it through the Surgery, it was rough.

It was a 10 hour surgery.

And there's so many details that I'm not even going to get into over it.

But suffice to say, he came out of the surgery, he.

All the pain that he experienced.

I'll actually let you talk about the pain, like your levels of pain like after the surgery, like, okay, so the pain that he was experiencing before, like he was saying he was on a fentanyl patch, he was on the hydrocodone pillow, but he was in so much pain.

And when those patches would wear off.

Yeah, he was in so much pain.

There was one time where I was like, oh no, we're not Satan, you're not gonna do this.

And I remember playing Michael W.

Smith's song, this is How I Fight my.

I think it's the song's titled Surrender.

And I played that as loud as I could and I just started singing it and I just started declaring it and that left immediately.

Like that pain like over.

That was overtaking Dave.

It literally was overtaking him.

It like left and we just kept standing on God's word.

But then, so that.

So now that you understand that the level of pain that he was in.

So he goes in, has a surgery, they remove the tumor, they get clean margins, everything looks good.

And then you know, you're.

Now you're in recovery.

So talk about your pain level.

Well, I made it through the surgery.

It was late at night.

They wheeled me into the room and the nurse said me and said, well, how's your pain level?

I said, ken, you want some morphine?

Sure.

Every day, several times a day, what's your pain level?

Well, the met state was about 8, the met state is about 6.

It may have calmed down faster than that.

I think by day of four or five, what's your pain level?

I said, maybe a one.

Finally one day, I think they five or six or seven, I was writing everything down.

That was my way to communicate.

So yeah, so his pain level.

So he walked out of the hospital on zero pain medication.

Zero.

Like he wasn't taking anything.

No aspirin?

No aspirin, no Tylenol, nothing.

Which was awesome.

But I do want to go back to while you were in the hospital.

So he was.

The surgery was 10 hours.

And they told us at the beginning it would probably be like a week that he would be in the hospital.

So I kind of planned on that.

I mean now remember we had just moved here, we have pets, we don't know anybody, we have no family, we have no friends, nothing.

Here.

God moved us here.

But our sweet, dear neighbors, who are brand new to us, you know, had come over.

They lived across the street from us.

They had come over and introduced themselves.

We got to know each other a little bit.

And then when.

When I talked to them again and I told them what was happening with Dave, they were like, what do you need?

What can we do?

And I was like, well, I gotta go to Jacksonville.

We have to go for a surgery, and I really need somebody to watch our cats.

No problem.

You know, whatever it takes.

However long you have to stay.

Don't worry about your cats.

We've got it.

They came over, they prayed over Dave.

They, like, took care of everything that we needed.

I mean, they were a godsend.

Like, literally angels God had sent from heaven to be there.

Because they ended up moving a couple years later.

Like, it was just God's timing.

So while Dave was in the hospital, I was.

I had.

It had been, I think, by that point, like, eight days that we had been over there.

And so I was like, I gotta go back home.

I gotta go check on the cats.

Gotta go kind of get new clothes and that sort of thing, drove back home.

And they said, well, before I left, they said, he's going to be in the hospital for at least another three or four days.

And I was like, okay, great.

I'm going to go home, get refreshed, get prepared for him to come home, and then I'll come back and pick him up.

So I had gone home on, like, a Thursday or something, and I thought, well, I'll just drive back up there, you know.

They said, three or four days, I'll drive back up.

They told me, Sunday, probably he'll be ready to go home.

So I said, okay, great.

I'll just come back on Sunday.

And I came home, got what I needed, done, drove back on Sunday.

And I get there, and they're like, well, he can't go home.

His white blood cell count is elevated.

He's got an infection.

I was like, okay, great.

And I was a little frustrated because I drove up there, and then I was like, well, I don't really want to stay.

I want to, so I'll just.

They said, well, it'll be another few days before we can get this down.

I was like, okay, well, I'll just drive back home.

But before I left, I was like, I just felt really impressed by God to just start praying over Dave and just doing praise and worship.

And up until that point, you had been listening to praise and worship music.

Yeah.

At night.

He would listen to praise and worship music.

So I went out to the nurse's station, and I said, can I just.

Can nobody disturb us for just another.

For like, at least another 30 minutes to an hour?

Just leave us be.

And I'm going to shut the door.

Everything's fine.

I just want to spend some time with Dave.

We're going to pray.

They were like, okay, no problem.

So I shut the door, and we turned up the praise and worship music, and I just started praise.

Praying over Dave and laying my hands on him.

And I just laid my hand.

I anointed him with some oil.

I don't even know where we got the oil.

From somewhere we got oil.

I anointed his head with oil, and I just started praying over him.

And I just kept.

I remember I kept telling you, receive, receive, receive, And I'll let you add anything you want to add.

That was the most beautiful thing I've ever experienced.

And the spirit of God was absolutely in that room.

And I felt so at peace.

And it was just a beautiful moment, not only with God, but with my wife.

And my wife actually do that and do that for me and us.

But I'll let her tell the rest of the story, because she said, well, I'll come back when they tell me to.

I just wait.

And so she did.

So, yeah, so I got done, and I said, well, I'm gonna go back home.

And he was fine with that.

And so I got back in the car and I drove home.

And then the next morning, he texts me because he can't really talk on the phone very well.

And he said, I'm getting released today.

And I was like, wait.

I was just there, like, what?

And he said, my white blood cell count is down, and it's perfect.

And they're allowing me to go home.

And my doctor came in.

Doctors came in before I patched her.

He said, well, your white blood cell, it's normal now.

I said, well, we prayed yesterday.

Well, it worked.

So, yeah, so he.

So he texted me, and I was like, are you kidding me?

But it was the best news because I'd rather him be home than to, you know, be there and be away.

And so I got back.

Yeah, I was frustrated and happy all at the same time.

So I hopped in the car and I drove back up there.

I picked him up, and we came back home and started his recovery.

And we were awaiting the biopsy results because that would determine what his treatments would be to, you know, further prevent the cancer from recurring, because they got clean margins.

They Said they removed the lymph nodes, and that's what they were testing was how much of it had moved into the lymph nodes and spread.

And that's obviously when you, you know, you don't want that to happen.

You're starting to go metastatic when you do that, and you don't want it to spread in your body.

And so we waited for several weeks before they gave us the results.

And, you know, during that time, we had a lot of, you know, Dave was recovering.

He had some infections going on, which further made us fear.

But it was just in my chin.

Yeah, it was just in his chin.

It was just the sutures and the plate that they had put in was causing some infections and stuff.

But they finally contacted us back to let us know what the biopsy results were, and they were like, well, he was at a stage four for his cancer, and meaning that it had started to spread, it only went into, like, they removed like, 35 lymph nodes, but it had only gone into like five.

Like five or something like that.

I can't remember the numbers, but it wasn't an enormous amount, but it was still there.

And so that meant that he would have to have chemo and radiation for sure.

So it would be.

They prescribed 35 rounds of radiation and three rounds of chemo, which sounds like, oh, that's not a lot of chemo.

But it was all day treatments.

And they do the chemo because the combination of chemo and radiation for oral cancer patients, when you combine those two, it really strengthens the treatments to where the cancer won't return.

And so it's a, you know, while it's only three treatments, it's all day.

Like, he would.

I would literally drop him off in the morning and pick him up in the late afternoon.

And it was a full drip of, you know, chemo all day long, intense treatments.

And then the radiation were intense treatments as well.

I do want to go back, and there's something that we didn't touch on at the beginning.

When all this started, when we lived in Jacksonville was kind of when all this really started.

But when we moved is when we found out, obviously, about the cancer.

And we have some really, really dear friends.

They were our neighbors.

We lived around each other for 11 years, and they were our best friends due to go to their son's.

He was graduating high school.

We were due to go to his graduation party.

And we.

It was.

We just got the diagnosis with Dave, and he was in so much pain, we couldn't do it.

And I remember telling them, you know, I contacted the wife, Kim, and let them know that, you know, we weren't going to be able to make it.

We were so sorry.

And I'll fill them in later as to, you know, why, but I didn't want to dampen the graduation.

So the graduation happened.

I reached back out to them to explain what was going on with Dave.

And she said, are you sitting down?

And I was like, oh, boy.

And she told me that her husband got diagnosed with the exact same cancer in the exact same location, except his was very early stage.

And I was shocked.

I couldn't believe it.

I was like, why is this happening?

Like, this is and crazy.

And we kind of joked around about it.

Like, you know, were they kissing or something?

Like, because we lived around each other from.

For 11 years.

Like, what was going on?

Was it something in the water?

Like, what was happening?

And so Julio, you know, his was a stage one.

So there's no follow up.

When you're a stage one oral cancer patient, the protocol is just to have surgery, remove the tumor and then that's it.

There is no chemo, there is no radiation, because like 95% of the patients, it's not going to recur, but there is that 5%.

So jump ahead a few years now.

Dave's already gone through his surgery by this point.

He's already.

He's in the throes of his treatment and Julio's cancer returns.

And so they're slating him to do the same exact surgery as Dave.

So we're trying to support them like they supported us through this whole thing.

I mean, I'll let you speak to how Julio supported you.

Yeah, Julio was a fantastic person and do anything.

And so he got his removed and he back back at work soon.

But he was a.

He really supported me by phone calls, texts, encouraging me to fight through it and help.

And then jump ahead like a year later, his came back and so they tried to get rid of it.

Some radiation messed up, but he ended up getting ready to have my type of surgery at a different hospital.

And they got in there and opened up and his cancer wrapped around his carotid artery.

There was no way to remove it or he would have bled out.

I'm like, why?

And so he had the herbie massive radiation just trying to burn off.

And it just got bigger and bigger.

And I was supporting him and preaching my word to him and just making sure.

We had Plans to do things.

He didn't make it.

But we were so dear friends with Kim and my two children and forever Mary and them, they were just a special bond.

But we still think about who is.

But what a blow to, you know.

Losing somebody like that was.

That was tough to hurt.

That really, really hurt to lose him.

And I, you know, it's, Dave said this earlier is why, you know, and I think a lot of people ask this question, why do good things, bad things happen to good people?

You know, we had a pastor, our pastor in Jacksonville actually once said, there are no good people.

We are, we are sin.

We are, you know, we are, he said, like he says at wretched black hearted sinners, you know, I mean, we're righteous by God, made holy.

And you know, I still, I mean, that doesn't give it a reason as to why.

I just know that, you know, God has his hand in everything.

And we all, I mean, the death rate hovers at 100%.

There's no escaping it.

We're all, every single person dies.

Every single person.

There's no escaping death.

We try as hard as we can.

We eat as healthy as we can.

We get, you know, Botox and we, we get all these, you know, things and medicines and herbs and we, you know, we do all the things to try and extend our life, but at the end we're just going to die.

And for some of us it's sooner rather than later, and some of us, it's longer.

And I don't understand it.

I certainly don't have an explanation and I don't pretend to, and I wish I did.

I, the only thing I know is that I trust in what God's plan is, and I trust that what he has is for our best.

And I know that His Word says that he does all things for our good.

And to trust in that, it's hard.

I get it.

I mean, I, I, it's hard to wrap my head around.

I mean, he left a beautiful wife and two beautiful children.

He, I mean, we went to his funeral.

It literally was standing room only.

Like, people were standing all around the room.

It was packed.

That's how much of an impact he made during his time on this earth.

He was just the most amazing human being ever.

And again, I don't have an answer.

I don't pretend to.

Maybe that's something we'll explore on this podcast going forward, is how do you deal with it.

And, you know, we did do an episode with Jessica Borman about grief.

It's, it's Something that, you know, we'll.

We'll forever grieve is his loss.

You know, it's like Dave said, they were.

They're our best friends, and we were supposed to travel together.

We were supposed to go do things together.

We were supposed to get through this cancer.

They were supposed to, you know, they were both supposed to survive.

They were both supposed to ring the bell.

And yesterday I sent Kim the text of the video of Dave ringing the bell.

And I said, I know this is bittersweet.

This is very bittersweet, you know, but as true Kim fashioned, she was so happy and so thrilled, you know, that Dave's made it through this journey.

At least something good is coming out of it.

So there's so much that we can unpack.

And like I said, for time's sake, I want to kind of make sure that we're.

I want out of all of this.

I want God to have the glory of the story, which is the whole point of us sharing the story is to give God the glory.

And one of the things I want to talk about is the people that he put in our path and the impact that we had through this journey.

So one of the things was when Dave started his.

Well, let me back up and say, when we got the diagnosis, we went to Jacksonville.

They told us what they were going to do.

I was like, well, we're going to get a second opinion, first of all, because that's a lot of.

That's a hack job they're going to do on you.

Let's make sure this is the right thing to do.

So I got online and started searching cancer doctors here in Tallahassee.

The best, you know, and it brought up this one doctor, Dr.

Rassam, and he, you know, it was a cancer center.

And so I reached out to make an appointment to get a second opinion.

And so we go to this appointment and we go in his office and super awesome, awesome guy, and we tell him what's going on.

He examines Dave and he's like, you know, well, I hate to tell you, but what they're proposing is actually protocol for this type of cancer.

And so that's what I would recommend you do.

And you're like, okay.

And he said, however, they're going to prescribe you chemo and radiation, and I would love to be your chemo doctor.

And that's what I do.

I mean, I, you know, I do the chemo treatments, so I'm going to go ahead and start connecting with them and lining that up and getting it prepped so that When Dave's done and he's recovered, because he has to.

Dave had to recover before they could do the whole thing.

Yeah, he had to recover like a whole month before they would administer the chemo and the radiation because his body needed to recover and his mouth needed to heal.

So he said, I'm going to line up the chemo and connect with your surgeons so that we have that done.

And.

And he said, do you have a radiation doctor?

And we were like, no.

He goes, great, I'll put in a recommendation.

I know a radiation doctor that I would recommend that you use.

I'm going to go ahead and put a call into him and you're going to get an appointment with him so he could start to line that up for you.

Because he has to get all the measurements.

He has to know where the cancer is located.

He needs to see it before the surgery, and then he needs to see Dave after the surgery so he can get all of the arrangements made.

And so we were like, okay, great.

So he lined all that up for us.

So we had all that taken care of.

So jump ahead.

Dave has the surgery.

The months passed.

He starts with the treatments.

And the nurse that is doing Dave's treatments is a Christian and she is the most amazing person and like, really is so supportive of Dave and like, really encouraging.

And I'll let you fill in the rest because this was our.

So I go to take Dave for his first.

I'll set up the first chemo session for you.

So I go to take Dave for his first chemo session.

I get him set up and it's a room and they've got all these kind of recliners in the room with little tables in between, and they have a TV in there.

And it's a lot of older people, so we have a lot of elderly people that live here in Tallahassee.

A lot of retirees.

Unfortunately, it's a lot of older people in there, so a lot of them are pretty, pretty severe cancer patients.

And this is kind of a last ditch effort to just maintain their, their level of life.

So I'm taking Dave to this cancer appointment and that's what we're faced with.

There's nobody his age, there's nobody younger, there's nobody really.

We're thinking, oh, this is going to be really.

It's going to be depressing, basically.

So I go to drop him off and I'll let him kind of share the rest.

Well, as you made me some lunch, I'm gonna have eight hours of muffin.

My Boo.

She said, read my book.

I said, okay, let me back up.

And say, Dave has never read the Beauty and Letting Go.

He lived it.

So he's like, I don't want to read it because I lived it.

So I thought, well, but you need at least know.

So if people ask you about the book, you can tell them a little bit about it.

So I thought, okay, well, this first chemo session, he's got eight hours.

I'm gonna give him the book.

He can start to read it during the session.

The nurse and I hit off immediately, and they prep you before they actually start putting the chemo in that day.

I telling my nurse, she said, what do you do?

I told her what I do.

What does your wife do?

I told her what Angie does, and we do the same thing, basically.

I said, well, by the way, she wrote a book, and it's right here.

I'm supposed to read it, really.

And long story short, I said, well, it's on Amazon, or you can buy it.

I ended up selling her the book I'm supposed to read.

And so Angie calls me.

I'm ready to come pick you up.

I said, well, bring another book, and I need you to sign one.

I just sold your book, but here we go.

At the end.

I still haven't read it.

In the following one, I think I saw one pivot.

One of the girls matched me.

It was in chemo.

And, yeah, I'm sitting there at Bimchimo.

I'm selling books.

Yeah.

He became my.

My salesman, my marketing person for my book.

He sold so many copies sitting there, I was cracking up.

But, yeah, I mean, just to have those ladies and then to make them laugh and to be a blessing to them, and we stayed in touch with them for the longest time.

That was a huge, huge blessing to be around those.

And as we went on through the journey, you know, it was probably.

You were done with treatments.

This may have been a year or two later.

I had an old client reach out to me.

Angie, can I, you know, schedule a call with you?

And I was like, sure.

So we scheduled a call, and she said, I have a friend whose husband just got diagnosed with oral cancer, and I was wondering if you would be willing to talk to her and just encourage her and share your story and support her in any way that she needs.

And I was like, absolutely.

And so she put us in touch, and I was able to support the wife and the husband through the cancer journey, and Dave was able to support as much as he could and share.

You know, we kind of led them and then jump ahead.

I had another friend of mine that I connected with on social media and her husband got diagnosed with cancer as well.

I think it was thyroid cancer.

And so I, you know, kind of encouraged her and supported her as much as I could.

So, you know, God was using this, you know, he always uses what, what we've gone through and there's a purpose for everything.

And so he was using that.

As much as I would rather that not be our ministry, you know, supporting others with oral cancer, you know, if that's what we're going to do, I mean, at least something comes out of it.

Jump ahead to, you know, just when we think, okay, we're five years out now and we think, well, you know, we're still available.

I mean I've, I've had other people come to us that have been diagnosed with oral cancer and I've support them as much as I can and.

But just when you think, okay, well, you know, God's using the story.

I mean he still uses this story.

At Dave's last appointment yesterday, one of his actual radiation therapist came up to talk to him.

And I'll let Dave share what she shared.

I had my final appointment yesterday.

I get bummed and I asked the nurse, I said, is this girl still here?

I couldn't remember her name.

She said, oh yeah, let me call her up here.

Here she comes down the hall and I peek around the corner, she hugs me.

And one of his hugs were hard and not letting go.

And I said, my five year mark, I'm done.

And she was so happy for me.

But then she proceeds to tell me that I was, you know, she sees us every day and you try to get not immune, just mum to it, you know.

And a lot of people that she deals with are elderly and here comes me, I'm young.

But she said, you were an inspiration.

You helped me with having me work on my job and with your humor and well, thank you.

I had no idea I was impact on you and your life and thank you for sharing.

And she hugged me about four more times, real hard, helped me and she sort of cry.

I mean, here we go.

Having fun with chemo, having fun with radiation.

You have to pulse in humor to get through it.

But yesterday, you know, that kind of icing on my cake to have somebody that'd be radiation for me and radiation come and just tell me her story and hug me like that.

And I've been through a lot.

I am so thankful I'm alive and I feel like I'm a much better person now and more in tune with the ward.

I've awesome ability to do certain things, especially my tongue, but we just make the best of it and use humor.

But I tell everybody when we introduce ourselves, I say, I'm David and this is Angie, and she's a wife of a century.

And I mean that.

She was a trooper on all levels.

So I love her and I thank her for her.

I love you too, babe.

We're gonna kind of wrap this up.

I mean, you've kind of shared how you felt like ringing the bell.

Like there's a lot to the story, but that kind of.

I mean, all that to say is I just wanted to end this year.

This is the final episode.

So there won't be an episode for the next two weeks.

We'll.

We'll come back in January.

But I wanted to end this year with an episode that just glorifies God and just gives anybody encouragement and hope.

And I will say one thing that, you know, Dave and I talked about was whether he lived or whether he died.

No matter what, he won.

Like, if he dies, you know, he goes to heaven and he wins.

If he lives, then he made it through and he wins.

So there was no lose situation.

It was a win win situation.

And another thing that helped out, you know, after I found out gay's not gonna die, I'm just doing new things.

Well, Angie found a rally song and it helped as well by Michael W.

Smith.

This is how I fight my battles and I almost cry if I'm gonna hear it.

You know, like I said earlier, God does everything and there's a reason for everything.

We may not understand it and we may not know it, and sometimes he doesn't.

We don't need to understand it.

We just need to just trust him and be in peace with him and trust that he is doing all things for our glory and he is doing new things.

And I hope this sharing, this testimony encourages you, encourages someone.

Share it with someone you love and hopefully it gives you some hope.

And the main thing I want you to do is when you're faced with these kinds of situations, don't do it alone.

Reach out to God.

Ask him.

Talk to him.

Ask him.

Like I did.

I just point blank went to him and asked him.

I mean, you know, I definitely questioned myself because it was like, do I, did I?

Do I want the answer of he's not going to die.

I wanted to know.

And I.

I think my heart posture was either way, just tell me the truth.

I want to know the truth.

And he did.

You know, he told me he's not going to die.

I took him at his word and held strong to his word and held strong to his promise.

And I encourage you to do the same.

You know, if he shared something with you, believe that.

Trust that.

Know that God can talk to you and trust that your experience of him.

You know, I always talk about that, about trusting your experience of God and how that was something that I struggled with most of my faith walk is trusting my own experience of God.

And so I want to encourage you that, to trust that, to trust that he does communicate with you.

So with all that, we hope that in this episode that it inspires and encourages you or someone you love that's maybe going through a season like this of illness and just be with them.

And with that, I am going to wrap up.

But before I do, I always give you a heavenly position system challenge.

And for this week's Heavenly position system challenge, I want you to do that.

I want you to trust in.

Is there something that you're facing?

Is there something that you're dealing with and struggling with that's huge, like an illness or whatever?

I just want to encourage you to go to God and talk to him about it.

Get your journal out, write to him, ask him like I did, you know, is he gonna die?

Is, you know, like that was the question that was on my mind.

That was something that I wanted to know the answer to.

Ask God your questions.

He may or may not be able to give you the answer.

Sometimes he withholds things for our own good, that there's things that we don't need to know just yet, but he will reveal them to us.

Stay, you know, know that that's a promise.

But he will give you something that will leave you with peace and you can rest in that peace.

So that is your heavenly position system challenges to go to God with something that you're facing at this, in this season of your life.

And I also want to invite you to be a part of this community.

If you're not, you can do that by going to spirit ledlifepodcast.com and on there you will see where you can sign up to receive our weekly emails.

I send those out every week.

They're short and to the point.

Don't worry, they're not really long.

I know it's another email in your inbox, but you don't have to dread it.

I put out what is in coming up that week for the podcast.

I put the show notes in there so they're easy to find.

You can see all the resources for that episode.

And I also share things in those emails that I don't share anywhere else, including this podcast.

So be sure to join by going to spiritledlifepodcast.com I'd love for you to start to be a part of our community and for those of you that already are a part of the community, I'm so grateful you're here and I love spending each week with you.

See, I have already begun.

Do you not see it?

I will make a pathway through the wilderness.

I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you for joining me on today's episode.

This episode was produced, recorded and edited by me, Angie Robertson.

I look forward to joining you each Thursday for a new episode as we explore together how to have a spirit led life.