I constantly tell people we have to stay in shape for our Savior so we can go the distance. I don’t want you taken out at age fifty, because God’s got a lot of work for you to do up until at least age seventy—the three score and ten the Bible indicates as a natural life span. I particularly hate to see young ministers taken out early, particularly if they haven’t taken care of themselves; I consider this poor stewardship.
Hurricanes
If I had begun to understand how to fight the spiritual battle, I would soon need everything I had learned and more. Four months after the bone marrow transplant, Chad’s leukemia came back. We were devastated.
His counts rose. He started losing weight again. And he developed a brain tumor behind his left ear. The tumor made him nauseated so that he could not eat, and he rapidly wasted away.
I admitted him to the hospital myself, stayed with him, and gave him more medicine, trying to restore his strength at least partially.
When we reached the point where we didn’t know what else to do, we took him back to M. D. Anderson in September 2004. They told us of another experimental drug that was becoming available—BMS. They wanted to put Chad through another course of treatment.
After more chemo treatments, M. D. Anderson asked us to take Chad home and give him a series of treatments there to restore his strength. If we did that, we could bring Chad back to M. D. Anderson and they would put him on the new drug.
While Chad was undergoing treatment at the hospital in Palm Beach, hurricanes Frances and then Jeanne battered our area. Jeanne came ashore with winds up to 120 miles per hour and knocked out the power at the hospital—and two-thirds of the county. The hospital didn’t have any water and the staff quickly ran out of food. Chad had to be moved out of his hospital room because a tree was smashing against his window. My wife stayed by him as I boarded up the house.
Chad wasn’t doing well. His bone marrow was no longer functioning as the cumulative effects of the chemotherapy devastated his system. When the power went out at the hospital, although they had backup generators, the institution’s ability to provide care was virtually knocked out, too. Deborah called me, frantic. Chad needed blood. The hospital could no longer supply the needed transfusion—the blood bank was empty. “There’s no blood here!” Deborah screamed into the phone so that I could hear above the wind. “You have to get it. Chad will die unless you get him some blood.”
“What about the emergency personnel at the hospital?”
“They won’t go out in the storm. They say it’s too dangerous. You’ll have to do it!”
“Where am I going to get blood in the middle of a hurricane?”
“The blood bank in the north part of the county. Just go up I-95.”
In the midst of a hurricane? “All right,” I said. “You’re sure this is critical?”
“Chauncey, your son is dying. How clear do I have to make this?”
“I’ll go. I’m gone.”
I couldn’t leave Christian behind, so I told him, “Strap yourself in, son. We’re going to get blood for your brother.”
The 100 mph winds felt as if they would topple our Range Rover at any moment. I put it in low gear and drove at a snail’s pace to keep it from being lifted off the road. There were no other cars. The only power lines we could see were on the ground. At midafternoon the world was a gray blur of wind and rain.
When I finally made it to the blood bank, I banged on the door to be let inside. “Open up. I need your help!” I went to every window and rapped. I saw someone look back finally. He looked so startled he might have been seeing the storm come in. I motioned frantically for him to open the door.
He finally cracked the door open. “What do you need, man? What’s going on?”
“I need blood for my son. I’m a doctor. I need blood. He’s type O negative. I have to rush it to Saint Mary’s Hospital to save his life.”
He let me inside finally. “Man, the electricity is off. I don’t know how—I don’t think we can do this.”
“I don’t care how you do it. Just do it. We need to get it to him today. Now. Right now.”
“You came through the storm?”
“Now!”
He led me back to the cooler. He turned on the generator and the building’s lights popped on. He found bags of blood that were properly matched and coded and put these in a cardboard box.
I went back to Christian, who was still in the car. I handed him the precious box of blood. “This is for your brother,” I said. “Put your seat belt on.”
All I could do was drive and pray. “God, protect us, because this is Chad’s only hope.” We made what would normally be a fifteen-minute trip in two hours, but we arrived in time.
CHAPTER 9
A Black Cloud and Lightning
The blood transfusions staved off Chad’s death, but he remained in serious condition, his marrow not producing cells, his body wasting away. I had taken him through the full course of treatment recommended by M. D. Anderson, done everything they’d asked in order to try another experimental drug, BMS. So I called the hospital and made arrangements to bring Chad back in the fall of 2004.
Once in Houston, Chad went through an assessment and his supervising physician called me in for a conference.
“Dr. Crandall,” he said, “I’m afraid your son hasn’t shown the improvement we need.”
I’m attuned to “doctor speak” and understood immediately where the conversation was heading. “I’ve done everything you wanted me to do,” I said.
“I’m sure you have. But your son’s too sick for an experimental treatment. It would skew the results of the trial.”
“Listen, Chief, you told me what to do. We put him through it all. My son’s life is on the line. He needs what you promised—BMS. I don’t care about what’s in your interests or the pharmaceutical company’s. I don’t care about the government’s protocols and criteria, either. I fought through two hurricanes to get that boy a blood transfusion. And I’ll do whatever it takes now to get him that drug.”
“Dr. Crandall, he’s too sick.”
I jumped out of my seat and grabbed the lapels of his lab coat. “My son is going to live! You give him the drug. You’ve got a child. You know what it means to have a son. I need my boy! I need him to live!”
They finally gave him BMS. Within hours, he looked better. BMS attacked the mutated line of cells that Gleevec couldn’t touch.
But BMS worked for only two weeks. Chad developed a rare mutation—the only one known to elude every available drug.
There was a third drug that could possibly bring about some improvement, although its effectiveness was speculative at best. But I pleaded once more for this drug to be administered.
We had to wait and wait some more to be put on the list for this third drug. The hospital gave Chad blood and platelets, and he was in and out of the hospital every three days. It was grueling.
Chad was so weak, he couldn’t even talk. I’d wheel him around in the wheelchair. Nearly all his hair was gone. We would pass people standing by their IV poles, many grotesquely disfigured, their heads misshapen, their ears missing, their arms amputated as a result of cancer and its brutalizing treatments. No matter how often the halls were cleaned and disinfected, the ward smelled of decaying flesh.
As I’ve mentioned, treating patients in extremis is hard on everyone involved, and the worse Chad’s condition became, the slower and less responsive the staff seemed to be. (Of course, Deborah and I were so desperate, the passing of time slowed almost to a stop.) But it’s a fact that some days we had to wait six hours to see a doctor.
The hospital eventually administered the third experimental drug, but it did not work. Chad was now in God’s hands, as he always had been, but in a way that was beyond anything but supernatural hope.
The Peace of Jesus
Chad’s own spiritual journey during his illness was more concealed from us as his parents than we had realized. After he got over the initial emba
rrassment of being prayed for at evangelistic events and healing services, he took them in stride, but he largely kept his own counsel about what he experienced. When Deborah would press him about what he thought about César Castellanos’s or Joel Stockstill’s praying for him, he’d beg off. “Mom, if I tell you, you’ll tell your friends, and then it will be all over town.”
That didn’t keep him from enjoying charismatic programs like The 700 Club and Kenneth Copeland’s show. He’d pay particular attention when Pat Robertson or Kenneth Copeland would pray for people, hoping his own name would be mentioned. He remained well behaved even as he moved into adolescence. When a TV show came on that looked good then became too sexually explicit, he’d turn it off.
Chad was more theologically astute than his parents realized, too. This came out in a funny way when Deborah turned on a regular show in which a teacher of the Word emphasized prophecy. Deborah found pondering Christ’s coming again a source of hope. But Chad protested, “Mom, we’re not going to watch this. Nobody knows the end times.”
Chad thought not only of himself but of his parents and his brother. He would say, “I’m sorry that I’ve ruined your life.” That broke our hearts, and it was impossible to explain how infinitely richer Chad had made our lives.
As anyone facing death does, Chad wanted to know that he was right with God. Before we returned to Houston, Chad worried aloud that he was going to stand before God and there would be something he hadn’t confessed or done. He knew that his salvation was from Christ alone, and yet he worried about going to heaven. Deborah kept telling him that this was the devil taunting and lying to him. His fears were sometimes prompted by the deaths of public figures. When Ray Charles and others died, Chad worried for days about whether they had gone to heaven.
Between treatments in Houston, Deborah would sometimes take Chad at night for car rides—to get him, if only for a while, as far away from the hospital environment as possible. Chad knew enough about his illness to understand that he was in trouble as never before. He could not avoid this knowledge, as he had contracted pneumonia and breathing became increasingly difficult. He had been asking us to explain his condition to him with a new urgency. In these circumstances, Deborah asked Chad if he felt there was anything more they needed to discuss, trying to draw out and assuage any fears that remained.
Chad said, “No, Mom, I’ve done everything. I’ve thought of everything. I’ve done my best.”
“I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course” (2 Tim. 4:7 KJV)—that’s how the apostle Paul put it, possibly with more elegance but not a smidgen more truth.
As I wheeled Chad around the hospital, from his bed to one treatment after another and back again, I caught him whispering something.
“What, Chad? What are you saying?”
“Dad, the peace of Jesus. The peace of Jesus.”
“The peace of Jesus?”
“The peace of Jesus.”
I’ve thought a lot about his saying this since, and I don’t think “the peace of Jesus” was so much his own prayer—although it was that—as a blessing he wanted to extend to the hospital and especially the other patients. He wanted the peace of Jesus to descend on that hospital as it filled his heart. We had been told that a war in the heavenlies was being fought over Chad—a war in which Chad, not his father, was the chief protagonist. Deborah and I think the Holy Spirit prepared Chad for his death and gave him an unusual participation in the life of God even as he was passing from this life.
Chad, evidently when his parents weren’t looking, read the Bible deeply and closely, with a prayerful attention spurred by his illness. Later we found his Bible had been underlined and annotated, passage after passage, especially those that had to do with fighting the spiritual battle. He seems to have especially liked Matthew 24:13: “He who stands firm to the end will be saved.” And “Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong” (1 Cor. 16:13).
Spiraling Down
Deborah and I both were with Chad every moment from late August through the end of September 2004. At that point I had to return to my practice and work enough to pay the bills. I called nightly to find out how Chad was doing. The doctor kept saying he was doing well.
When I returned I didn’t like what I found. Chad’s pneumonia was much worse; he was suffering from malnutrition and bedsores—problems that should have been addressed with greater care. This is basic medicine, but it’s medicine that often breaks down toward the end of someone’s life because the personnel around the patient give up hope. Chad couldn’t sleep at night because there was too much fluid in his lungs. All he could do was doze in a chair.
I’m ashamed to say I partly blamed Deborah for his condition. “Can’t you see what’s been happening?” I asked. “You should know better than to trust these people.” In a situation like this the urge to blame someone becomes overwhelming. While I blamed her for the bad turn he’d taken, Deborah blamed me for Chad’s being sick. Neither of us was at fault; the disease was at fault and was beating up our marriage in the bargain. Deborah was doing everything she could to keep him alive, preparing special foods and coaxing him with pleas of “Please eat!” I was trying everything I knew as a physician. We were constantly crying to God, “Heal him!” Nothing was working, and by this time we felt burned-out and almost numb.
I ordered oxygen and the people at the hospital were slow to respond. I thought I could do the simple remedial treatments that were necessary back at our apartment, so we took Chad home for about a week.
Toward the end of October Chad could hardly breathe one night, and we had to rush him back to the hospital. Once we put him in a hospital bed, Chad perked up somewhat. The doctor on duty that night recommended, nevertheless, that he be transferred from the general ward to the intensive care unit. Chad’s X-rays revealed he had significant fluid in his lungs—he was drowning inside.
The doctor asked, “What do you want to do?”
“What in the world does that mean?”
“His lungs look terrible, Dr. Crandall. He’s dying.”
“Yes, and I don’t want him to. Isn’t that the point? He’s got fluid in his lungs. That can be taken care of. In fact, it should have been taken care of. I was gone for a week to take care of my own practice. If Chad wasn’t doing fine, someone should have told me.”
“Let’s get him into the ICU, as I’ve recommended, and get him feeling better. We can put him on a ventilator to help him breathe.”
The mention of a ventilator nearly crushed the life out of me. They would put him on a ventilator and sedate him and he’d never open his eyes again. I’d never hear his voice again. He’d never respond to my hand squeeze again.
I said, “No ventilator. You can do whatever else you want—but no ventilator.” On previous occasions I had already seen the ICU packed with kids on ventilators, their families weeping, their kids growing closer to death every minute. I still felt strongly that God was going to intervene and we were going to ride this thing out. I didn’t want that chance cut short.
Chad was taken to the ICU. He was not put on a ventilator. Instead, to aid his breathing the doctor used a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine, which uses a special mask that pushes air in and out of the lungs, but without the aid of a breathing tube. There was no need to sedate Chad with the CPAP machine. Chad began to do better. His condition improved markedly, but it was still a battle.
A Mother’s Miracle
In the last week of October, Chad’s blood pressure dropped, his heart almost flatlined, and his whole body went limp. He was gone. His medical team came rushing into the room. Deborah scooped Chad up in her arms and sat him up in bed and held him upright. She started praying, repeating Bible verses over and over, the phrases spilling out, words rushing forward like a river. Scripture after Scripture flowed out, all long ago memorized from Dodie Osteen’s book and others. I couldn’t believe she had memorized so much or could have the stamina to pray and pray and
pray in the face of her child’s death.
One of Chad’s nurses fell to her knees crying, acknowledging the presence of God. The respiratory tech was there, his eyes wide. I can’t say a beam of light shone on Deborah and Chad, but it seemed as if it did. Deborah was speaking God and glory over her boy who was dead. The river of God’s Word kept flowing. Deborah embraced Chad and God embraced Deborah and Chad came back to life. His body became pink—rosy with health.
The nurse said she had never seen anything like it. The respiratory tech said he’d never seen anything like it. “You prayed over your boy and he’s alive,” he said in wonder.
Deborah laid him back in bed. His skin color had not only come back, but one of his major wounds had even healed. He had had a tumor on his side, and the skin there looked like a swirl of melted cheese from radiation and scar tissue. That place on his side looked as healthy and new now as a child’s skin. It was as if God had literally touched him. His vital signs started coming up. And his breathing improved. Even his blood work returned to normal. We thought, Wow, we’ve got a victory! He’s going to make it!
The following morning Deborah asked, “Chad, can you hear me? I love you.”
He squeezed her hand and said, “I love you, too, Mom.”
A Fight in the Heavenlies
But that day Chad’s condition slipped again. The next day it was Halloween. We felt as if we were fighting the darkness all day. Nurses dressed as witches and techs as warlocks pranced around hanging fake cobwebs and taping up spiders. They were giggling and laughing and inadvertently collaborating with the darkness we were battling.
Deborah and I stayed with Chad all through the night. Christian was there, too. We had a telephone call from Larry Stockstill—Joel Stockstill’s father—who recommended that we do what the Stockstills had done when Joel was near death one time. He advised us to stand over Chad and release him into the Lord’s care. So I stood on one side of Chad’s bed, and Deborah and Christian on the other, and we joined hands over Chad, making an arc of love and protection, and gave Chad’s life into God’s hands. We asked aloud for His will to be done in Chad’s life (which both Deborah and I reminded the Lord was to heal him).
Raising the Dead Page 11