Faith

After having such a close brush with death, I had to reevaluate my life as I already know I won't be around for long. It was a long overdue self-evaluation as I discovered I'd been running on autopilot for years, perhaps decades.

I quit the Christian faith back around 1992. I had witnessed far too much church corruption and it was wearing on my soul. Between the issues I had found in my own religious studies, the apathy of the church clergy who were supposed to help me, the hypocrisy of my own peers within the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship that I was very active in, I realized that I could no longer believe in the Christian faith. So I left and was turned overnight into a pariah (save for one stalwart friend).

Never again, I said. Took me nearly 6 months to stop saying grace automatically at meals.

After 23 years, I'm returning to the faith after an intervention by one of my friends and it was a good discussion. As strange as it sounds, I think that my hiatus from God actually drew me closer to Him because now I know how it feels to be so utterly alone.

Do note that I'm still a scientist and I don't intend to compromise that. My current position is pro-choice on abortion, LGBTQ-affirming and pro-science. It doesn't mean that I won't change those positions in the future as I study the Scriptures but even if I did, I still intend on following the "live and let live" policy that's been in place for decades. If I am to draw people to God, it'll be through His goodness and purity shining through my life's example. Between recovering from my hospitalization and the chemo side-effects, I simply don't have the energy to do any more anyways.

I don't take the Bible literally nor do I consider it to be God's Big Bumper Book of Facts. I do believe as a tenet of my faith that as the Word of God and as a book of moral teachings that it is the truth and is error-free. It doesn't mean that it's easy to understand and it doesn't mean that it doesn't contain what looks like contradictions. The latter really stuck in my craw back when I was younger but to my joy, I'm finding that I'm able to logically reconcile these contradictions as I go through the Bible these days. Perhaps I'm a little older and wiser or perhaps the study resources are far, far better these days than 20+ years ago. Or perhaps God has just granted me some wisdom to understand His Word a little better.

I'm not planning on posting a lot of religious content here. Probably none, in fact - it's out of scope for the intent of this blog.

Regardless, I'm at peace now which isn't a bad place to be for someone with a fatal disease.

Hospitalization (Oct. 2015)

It's been a while since I posted and there's a reason for it: shortly after Canadian Thanksgiving, I fell extremely ill. How ill? I've lost 2 weeks worth of memories. They're just...gone. I spent two weeks in hospital and the last thing I remember was the Tom Baker staff instructing me to hang up and dial 911. Apparently, I spent 14 hours in the ER waiting for a bed in a ward and very nearly died in hospital.

My first firm memories date back to the afternoon of Sunday, Oct. 25th. Everything prior to that starting from Oct. 12th and either plain missing or deeply fragmented like my memory of making that 911 call.

What happened? The doctors are diagnosing it as "colitis", which is a catch-all for "we don't know what happened but the patient seems to be responding to our treatment". Regardless, I'm glad to be alive.

Oh, and they're suspecting I have Irritable Bowel Syndrome as well. Look that up and you'll see how slippery that one is for treatment.

I'm physically weak currently, extremely so. I can't really walk very far by myself so they've loaned me a walker. Due to my cancer, Palliative Care has also swung into action and have assigned me a loaner powered hospital bed for when I'm too weak to sit up. They've also assigned me a homecare nurse to check in on me. All of this is very nice but it's also scaring me as to how bad this is going to get. I'm hoping it's not as bad as my very active imagination can cook up but at the same time, it's comforting to know that there's all these resources available to me.

I'm off chemotherapy at present as I've been told that in my weakened condition, chemo will kill me. I'm okay with stopping chemo for now and am trying to enjoy the unplanned break.

Chemo will start again in just over a week. Not looking forward to it but I do want to try to beat this tumour if possible. It's likely in vain but I'm trying hard to stay hopeful.