Raising the Dead Read online

  The diagnosis shocked both our sons. Another boy in the area had died of leukemia, and our sons knew more than most children their age how deadly the disease could be. Chad reacted by tuning out, but Christian convulsed with dry heaves, and we were all soon in the bathroom trying to calm him.

  When we returned to the house that night, I looked over at the piano and saw a Bible on the music stand above the keyboard. I held it in the air and prayed, “Lord, if You are real, You have to heal my son.”

  This prayer was more of a turning point than I could have known. As a doctor I knew that we were not looking at a good outcome. I could only rely on my Christian faith, one unprepared to meet such a challenge. Until my son became ill, I was content to know that I was going to heaven, and for the rest I depended on my own ability to meet any challenge, as well as the common sense that my family instilled. “I will find a way” was my motto. For the first time in my life I was up against an enemy that was completely beyond my control.

  The only thing we had experienced in our marriage that was like this experience in any way was ten years earlier when Deborah and I tried to have children to no avail. We took the boys’ finally coming into our lives as a miracle—there’s a story there, too. We held them as tightly as we could and were no doubt overprotective.

  But now leukemia shattered any thought of going on as before. Deborah’s faith was deeper than mine; she had helped bring me to Christianity, in fact. Over the years she had encountered the reality of healing prayer on a couple of occasions, as well as other evidences of God’s continuing presence in the world. I didn’t know much, but I knew enough to follow those bread crumbs of faith to their source. I knew enough to ask God that my son be healed. And so began a new way of life.

  Skirmishes as the Battle Begins

  During the next weeks I cut my work schedule down radically in order to become an expert in the treatment of leukemia and what the Bible says about healing. Looking back, I wish I’d had Christian friends who could have interceded with me for my son’s healing; Christian friends who really believed, as I do now, that we fight not only against “flesh and blood,” or natural causes, as the apostle Paul wrote, but against “principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world,” meaning the forces of evil (Eph. 6:12 KJV). I’m convinced that cancer is not only a disease but a purposeful evil. But at that point I did not even know how to interpret the Bible properly.

  I began by reading through the New Testament and underlining every passage that had to do with healing. Then I did computer searches throughout the Bible, cross-referencing passages to see when and how and for what purpose God chose to bring healing through prayer. I also began to read books like T. L. Osborn’s Healing the Sick, Reinhard Bonnke’s Mighty Manifestations, and Charles and Frances Hunter’s How to Heal the Sick.

  At the same time I called old colleagues at Yale and Duke and other places around the country to find out where the best pediatric cancer centers were and the latest developments in the field. Subsequent tests on Chad, a bone marrow aspirate and a bone marrow biopsy, along with the FISH lab test, revealed that he had a form of leukemia known as chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). CML is comparatively rare in children.

  Looking back, what I should’ve done was find the best doctor, entrust Chad to his care, and then spend time in the Word and seek God. But I wanted to do everything I could, which to my mind meant serving as lead doctor in the case, particularly when it came to shielding the family from the bad news about CML and its likely progress.

  My attempts to protect the family would later cause strife, as I unwittingly became the face of the disease—the one who was always disappointing their hopes. At the time, “I will find a way” took over wherever it could.

  Chad’s counts did go up, unhappily, and we had to put him in the hospital so that his chemotherapy regimen could be strengthened. Our friends who attended a nearby church came by and suggested that we bring him to the Wednesday evening service for prayer. I doubted his doctors would release him, but Deborah insisted: “You tell the doctor we are taking our son to the service.” She had the greater wisdom, and in this and many instances to follow she rightly pointed out when it was time for us to take charge of Chad’s care.

  The doctor resisted, as I knew he would, since Chad had an IV. I had to tell him, “Listen, I’m taking my son to church tonight. We’re seeking God.”

  Then I had to persuade Chad that he needn’t be embarrassed about going to church with an IV hookup, which we covered to minimize his uneasiness.

  In the middle of the Wednesday night service, the pastor called all the elders to gather around Chad, lay hands on him, and pray for him, as the pastor anointed him with oil. It was a straightforward evangelical church, and this ministration of healing prayer, although it’s thoroughly biblical (James 5:14), was an unusual event in the church’s practice. Deb and I were grateful. I wept as the pastor and the elders prayed. I just needed some reassurance from the Lord that He was there, helping us.

  Afterward, Chad looked better, and sure enough when the hospital checked his counts the next morning, they were down enough for him to come home.

  My study of the Scriptures began convincing me that my son could be healed through prayer. One key seemed to be a community of believers uniting their prayers toward this end. This was certainly the case at the Wednesday night service at the church.

  I didn’t feel, though, that many of the Christians within our circle actually believed in the power of prayer to heal. Everyone readily volunteered to pray for Chad, that’s true, but when I asked whether spiritual gifts like healing were as active today as in the time of the New Testament, I ran into demurrals. Many thought the miraculous times of the Scriptures had passed. The miracles had been necessary as a witness before the New Testament came into existence. In our time, the Word of God sufficed for belief, and therefore miraculous healing was rare, if it existed at all.

  But I didn’t see in the Bible where a time limit was placed on the power of healing prayer. Maybe I didn’t want to see this because my son was sick, but why would Christ suspend His promise to His followers that they would do “greater” miracles than His own (John 14:12)?

  Deborah and I were coming to believe more and more in the reality of the supernatural in our own time, and we became willing to take measures that I’m sure in many of our fellow Christians’ eyes looked suspicious. Simultaneously, we reached out to the best doctors in the world and took unusual paths in our family’s quest for healing through Christ.

  CHAPTER 3

  Seeing Life, Seeing Death

  A short time later Chad was scheduled for an appointment at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston—part of the Harvard medical complex—when a friend called to say that Sister Briege McKenna, a nun with an international Christian ministry, was staying on Palm Beach island. She was willing to pray for Chad, but she could see him only on the day we were flying out.

  Once crippled with rheumatoid arthritis, Sister Briege was healed at the age of twenty-four while praying during worship. A short time later she was given the gift of healing through prayer, and she has been involved in this ministry for thirty years. After reading her book, Miracles Do Happen, people come from all over the world to her retreat center in Tampa, Florida, to pray with her for healing. Deborah saw the opportunity for Sister Briege to pray with Chad as a gift we could not afford to pass up.

  I was more intent on getting Chad to Dana-Farber on time. I knew how fast his leukemia was progressing and understood too well the insidious nature of the disease.

  CML is like a “mole” within an intelligence agency—it looks loyal while systematically working to undermine the body’s defenses. With CML one bone marrow stem cell—just one—undergoes a chromosomal abnormality. Through other chromosomal activity a cancer gene forms and creates a protein that alters the white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets that the stem cell manufactures. These cells are almost normal, but
not quite—like the work of a traitorous agent. The affected white blood cells multiply at a much faster rate than normal and the red blood cells and platelets at a slower rate.

  The affected red blood cells also don’t do their job of carrying oxygen as effectively. The abnormal cells begin to crowd out the normal ones. The white blood cell count eventually rises so high that blood flow slows down like a freeway at rush hour and every system in the body is starved for oxygen. The patient becomes ever more anemic. That’s why Chad’s muscles and skin were wasting away, why he had trouble catching his breath, why he experienced night sweats, and why his spleen was swollen. That was why we had to get him to Dana-Farber fast!

  “I Saw Jesus”

  Deborah insisted we fit in the visit to Sister Briege. I saw how this would be possible only if I didn’t go with them but remained at home to tie up the loose ends of our trip preparations on my own. I didn’t like not going; I wanted to be there for Chad every step of the way.

  Deborah took Chad to the residence of the Sugarcane family, where Sister Briege was staying. Originally from Ireland, where she joined the Sisters of Saint Clare at fifteen, Sister Briege still reminds one of the Irish lass she once was, with thick, reddish-brown hair and the type of fair complexion that freckles in the sun. She has a broad, slightly gap-toothed smile and lines around her eyes that testify to her smile’s frequent appearance. She wore a plain dress rather than a habit. As Deborah and Chad approached the house, she motioned and called out, “Come in, Chad, come in, Deborah, I want to pray for you.”

  She spoke briefly with Deborah and Chad about having a relationship with Christ, how the Lord can heal, and of the miracles she’s seen. “When I pray for you, Chad,” she said, “all I want for you to do is to think of Jesus.” So she prayed for Chad to be healed, and when she finished, she said, “Whatever you do, just don’t stop taking the medicine. That’s what the Lord told me. Don’t stop taking your medicine.”

  When Deborah and Chad came home, before we left for the airport, I had a private moment with Deborah in which I asked her how the visit with Sister Briege went. She gave me an answer I couldn’t really believe. “When Sister Briege prayed for Chad,” Deborah said, “I saw Christ.”

  “What?”

  “I had my eyes closed, but as the sister was praying, I saw Christ walk into the room. He was dressed in a white gown. He was wearing a rope belt and sandals. I couldn’t see His face. Just His hair and His body. But there was a peace and a presence about Him—I knew it was Jesus.”

  “But your eyes were closed.”

  “I don’t care if my eyes were closed. I saw Jesus.”

  I didn’t say anything, because how do you respond to that? I had my skeptical suspicions—the emotional circumstances, the power of autosuggestion.

  After we arrived in Boston, driving to the hotel, I asked Chad about the visit with Sister Briege.

  Deborah wanted to know, “Did you see anything?” They hadn’t discussed Deborah’s experience.

  “Oh yeah, Mom,” Chad said. “I saw Jesus.”

  “Okay,” I said skeptically, “what did He look like? Give me details.”

  “I had my eyes closed, Dad, but I still saw Jesus. He had on a white gown and sandals, with a rope belt. I couldn’t see His face, really.”

  The image they shared was a conventional one, I thought dismissively, and Sister Briege had asked them both to think of Jesus as she prayed. That they both noted Jesus wearing a rope belt gave me pause, though. That detail, while common enough, increased the likelihood of the vision’s authenticity, as they both thought to mention it. Still, I wasn’t about to get carried away.

  “Something’s Not Right”

  The next morning, we kept our appointment at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. A cancer center, even for a doctor, is a frightening place. It’s hard to see people who have been reduced to skeletons walking around with IV poles. To glimpse others, particularly children, with their hair gone, limbs amputated, their heads sometimes grotesquely lopsided from craniectomies, is harrowing. The stench of death was rife in that place. And there was a darkened atmosphere at Dana-Farber that I still cannot account for—it could have been the shock of seeing so many people in the latter stages of their battle with cancer, of course, but I’m not sure it was only that.

  We weren’t in the building very long before Deborah wanted to leave. “We shouldn’t stay here,” she said. “I don’t have a good feeling about this place.”

  “This is Harvard’s cancer center,” I said. “It’s probably the best place in the world for the treatment of children. What are you talking about?”

  “Something’s not right,” she said. She leaned over and whispered to me, “I feel like they are going to kill him.”

  “It’s the cancer that’s going to kill him if we don’t get him treated!” I whispered right back. “This is our son. We have to do the best thing for him. I know it’s hard.”

  Deborah stopped whispering. “I’m telling you, they will kill him. This place is evil. Let’s leave now. I don’t care about the appointment.”

  “Deborah, I’m a doctor. I have to meet with the doctors. I need to hear what they have to say. This is science, not voodoo.”

  She said, “I don’t care what they say. I want to see what Jesus has to say about this.”

  “Deborah, please.”

  After we waited for more than an hour, we learned that we hadn’t been properly scheduled. Somehow the person who set up the appointment hadn’t communicated, and no one was prepared to take charge of Chad’s case. The hospital staff knew it was in error and scrambled to make room for us. Still, we weren’t going to be seeing the specialists I had found through my research, but their junior colleagues.

  This first disappointment was the start of a long journey in which I found out what it’s really like to be on the receiving end of our medical system. I couldn’t understand how they could be treating us this way. My son’s life was on the line. I was a colleague—part of the medical brotherhood. I had spent a small fortune just flying the family to Boston. Chad needed the best of medical care—and our indifferent reception would only become more callous as the day unfolded.

  A young woman finally met with us for a consultation. She was the type of specialist who seemed to believe that advanced training dispenses with a need for a bedside manner. Chad was right there by our sides as she launched into her evaluation, her tone so threatening she seemed to take the disease’s side. “I’m sure you know CML is incurable. Very few make it, and that’s even truer with children. You need to face the possibility that your son is going to die. That’s the only way you’ll be prepared for what he’ll have to undergo in treatment.”

  Deborah started choking. She held out her hands for the doctor to stop. I tried to comfort her as best I could. I couldn’t believe a physician would start off like this—not with the eleven-year-old patient in the room. Not in front of a patient of any age!

  When Deborah recovered enough, she said, “You see! It’s this place. It’s death. Chad and I are going out into the hall. If you want to talk to this lady, you can.”

  Once Deborah and Chad had left, the young doctor continued in much the same way. She said that Chad needed a bone marrow transplant immediately. If we didn’t set up the transplant, Chad was surely going to die. She couldn’t promise the bone marrow transplant would be effective, but it would likely give us more time with him. We should use that time to get whatever affairs needed tending in order. I have never heard a physician speak so aggressively and ruthlessly, and she was talking about my son.

  We Don’t Want a Transplant

  In fairness, part of this was motivated by Deborah’s and my resistance to a bone marrow transplant. Most have heard of this as the magic cure, the silver bullet, for leukemia. As a doctor I was more aware than the average person of the risks. A bone marrow transplant is far from a slam dunk—a percentage of patients die from the procedure. Then there’s graft-versus-host disease, which ca
n cause numerous problems.

  A bone marrow transplant involves wiping out the patient’s immune system and the transfusion of bone marrow stem cells from someone who is a close match genetically. A perfect genetic match isn’t wanted. The transplanted cells need to replace the patient’s own cells, and a war ensues between the transplanted cells and those the body tries to regenerate. Even if the transplanted cells win out, this can come at a cost, described as graft-versus-host disease. The war between the cells can cause chronic skin disorders, liver failure, kidney failure—problems with just about every major system.

  Children who receive bone marrow transplants become sterile and their growth is stunted. They can suffer gross disfigurement. I suppose it was a sign of our hopefulness that we still believed such a desperate remedy might be avoided. It was this hope that the young doctor was trying to check. I’m sure she thought Chad’s parents, particularly his physician father, were foolishly resisting the one procedure that might save his life.

  But I had brought Chad to Boston for remedies not available elsewhere. If we had wanted a bone marrow transplant, our facilities in Florida were perfectly suitable and far more convenient. The young doctor had nothing else to offer.

  I walked out into the hall and said to Deborah, “You’re right. Let’s go home.”

  When we arrived back in Florida, I made a new agreement with my wife. “Deborah, I’m going to focus on the medical, and you focus on the spiritual. I’m having trouble doing both.”

  After that I stopped working almost entirely. All day, every day, I continued researching possible cures for CML, delving into cutting-edge studies, the latest drug trials, and calling every doctor and researcher on the forefront of the battle.

  CHAPTER 4

  A Miracle Drug or Miracles?