My Year with Cancer and What Jesus Taught Me:

In November 2012, as I was transitioning from my law practice to full-time work with the legal clinic ministry, a mucinous adenocarcinoma tumor burst my appendix, spilling cancer cells into my abdomen. I was treated by a team of cancer surgeons at Penn who explained the gravity of my diagnosis: those cells had a 75% chance of growing into new tumors and available treatments were either ineffective or very risky. The median life expectancy of someone with this rare appendix cancer is seven years. I decided to undergo a high risk surgery known as HIPEC at a specialty surgery center at the University of Pittsburgh. During a six-hour procedure, heated chemotherapy was poured into my open abdomen, in the hopes of killing the cancer cells before they could grow. Several small cancer seeds were removed during the surgery. Not fully recovered from the surgery, I underwent twelve chemotherapy sessions over a six-month period, which ended in December 2013. Over that year, I endured three lengthy hospitalizations, two surgeries, nine CT scans, and countless IVs and blood tests. It’s been over a year since my last treatment and I am feeling well again.

But more importantly I’m changed.