I usually use this blog to write about our journey with Adam, in the very real storm that has been his life threatening illness at birth and then all of the years since in which we’ve learned what it means to live a new normal, in the light of multiple complex disabilities.  This particular storm in our lives has taken over eight years to adjust to the new normal but in certain respects at least, it seemed that life was calming down simply because we were adjusting and what was once new and strange territory, had become our day to day world.

But in the last month, that relatively settled perspective has been completely turned upside down, shaken and we are once again in the middle of a more immense storm than I ever could have comprehended.  Right now, the wind is so strong and the waves are so high that our little family boat feels like it’s being completely swamped.

For the last ten months, my husband, Adam’s Dad, had been visiting the doctor with increasing regularity complaining first of shoulder pain, then back pain, then blurred and double vision and a number of other increasing symptoms.  The man who had once experienced approximately one cold per year was watching as his health utterly failed him.  But despite his best efforts to get help, the doctors insisted each of his symptoms were separate and minor – pulled muscles, soft tissue damage, a need for new glasses and on and on.  Here, they said, have a referral to physio where you will be shown stretches for your soft tissue damage, those lumps on your skin?  Those are swollen pulled muscles.  The pain you’re having?  Nothing to worry about, have some paracetamol…naproxen….codeine….tramadol.  Two X-rays were ordered, a little bit of very specific blood work, and eventually months later, routine MRI’s requested, appointments for which were received with long waiting periods.

“Are you sure all of this isn’t connected?  Is it really separate conditions?” Chris asked.

“Oh no, it’s all separate, nothing to worry about,” the doctors replied.

“Are you sure you can’t move the scan dates forward?” Both Chris and I asked.

“No, that’s not possible I’m afraid, the service is too overstretched,” the doctors replied.

“What are you actually worried about?”  One doctor asked me.

“I’m afraid it’s cancer,” I replied.

The doctor laughed, a deep unconcerned chuckle, “Ok, let’s not go for the worst one first, let’s look at a few other things first, ok?”

That doctor, along with all of the others, was wrong.  It is cancer.  Stage Four Incurable Cancer to be wholly accurate.  So not pulled muscles or tissue damage at all.  And the lumps that were described as swollen muscles?  Those are tumours – visible tumours on the surface of Chris’s skin.  The back pain?  Multiple spinal fractures, only diagnosed when out of sheer desperation, Chris went private and had an MRI at the Nuffield in Leeds who sent him straight to the A&E, less than a week later (and still before the dates of the NHS MRI’s) he was having spinal surgery to insert rods into his spine to try to stabilise the fractures and give him a chance of walking again.  Transferred back and forth between Huddersfield and Leeds hospitals by ambulance, flat on his back on “log roll” only (as in being moved by multiple staff with a back board) and suddenly plenty of time for emergency X-rays, CT Scans, MRI’s and repeat.

Chris has primary kidney cancer and secondary bone cancer with multiple tumours on his spine, pelvis and sacrum and another inside his skull and reaching up into his brain.  Prognosis, life expectancy?  Maybe, if he’s really fortunate, a small number of years…or maybe months…as in less than twelve.

“We’ll help you apply for PIP under the Special Rules for those who are life limited,” Said the Macmillan Benefits Advice Officer.  “We’ll make sure you get a blue badge as well.”

“You really should make early claims on your pensions and life insurance,” says the Consultant Oncologist.  “We’ll help you with any reports that need writing to confirm the diagnosis and prognosis.”

“You should only have home visits from now on,” says the GP.  “I’ll put a note on your records that it needs to be same day service.  Call us anytime.”

“You’ll need to consider where you want to die,” says the District Nurse.  “In hospital, a hospice, care home or at home.  We’ll need to know so we can honour your wishes.”

“Surely, something like this makes you question your faith? Says the Contractor charged with installing disability access rails in the bathrooms.  “I mean, you’ve got to be asking questions.  Where is The Big Guy if this kind of thing is allowed to happen?”

So yes, where is God when it hurts?  Where is God when bad things happen to good people?  Why do bad things happen to good people?  Why is this happening to us?

I am a lifelong Christian, and I am also a Vicar so you would think of all people, I might have some answers to those questions, wouldn’t you?  It should come with the profession, or vocation as you prefer to describe it.  I should somehow be immune to the questions, the doubts, the fears, the anger, the griefs, the despair….shouldn’t I?

Shouldn’t I…?

Part Two:  Where is God when Cancer strikes?