“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’” (Jeremiah 29:11).
Many of us cling to this verse of hope and look for all the blessings in our lives. When I was in grad school my mom would quote this verse to me when I was going through a hard time or found myself frustrated by my circumstances. I always equated this verse with good things, and that the plans I had for my life would work out. Sometimes we go on journeys that prove it’s not about our plans, it’s about God’s plans–and those don’t always make sense.
My husband, Chris, and I planned a quick get-away after he went through a hard quarter. While we were on vacation I found myself in the ER. What I thought was the worst IBS attack I’d ever had ended up being a kidney stone. With the aid of painkillers, fluids, and time, my kidney stone passed. The ER doctor told me to follow up with my primary care doctor and sent me on my way to try and enjoy the rest of my vacation.
Following up with my doctor a while later, she laughed at my CT results and was convinced they had made a typo. I maybe had a 1.8 mm stone, but not an 18 mm stone. We repeated the CT to make sure everything was ok. I was far from ok. My right kidney had a 20 mm stone blocking kidney function, a bunch of debris in the kidney, and a mass with blood flow–cancer. With one conversation all of my plans changed. Instead of planning for a family, now my plans had to shift into how to save my kidney.
In the year that would follow, so many doctors I met with would be shocked to see me. Renal cancer is something people in their 60s and 70s deal with, not someone in their 30s. Yet there I was. The hardest part of the journey was that for a year I lived in a state of unknown. “Renal cell carcinoma until proven otherwise.” Until they could biopsy the mass they couldn’t confirm the cancer diagnosis. The worst kind of Shrodinger’s cat. Where do I place my hope in that situation? Do I hope it’s cancer so then my feelings for the last year are justified? Or hope it’s not cancer and feel like I overreacted?
Why not create a plan to get answers? Why not just biopsy the mass and get the results? My kidney was too sick. While most people hear a possible cancer diagnosis and believe that is the most pressing issue, in my case, my urologist was more worried about the stones and how they were affecting kidney function. Therefore, stone removal took precedence in order to help my kidney heal before tackling the mass. So, for me, it was a waiting game.
How do you make or follow through on plans in that situation? Being stuck in the unknown, it felt like my life was on pause. I’ve always had a plan, and backup plans in case those plans don’t work out. This journey has not been easy because I didn’t know how to plan and I had to rely on the wisdom of others. There were long periods where we didn’t know when the next surgery would be. Some surgeries didn’t fully go as planned, so we had to reassess and make a new game plan. It took three surgeries, each with their own complications and recovery plans. The final surgery confirmed cancer. After almost a year, I finally had answers, along with a cure.
Looking back on the events of the last two years, I can see how God has guided my journey. Sometimes the plans we want and those which God provides are very different. I didn’t want to face cancer, but in that journey God opened the right doors. Within days of contacting Loma Linda University Medical Center I had an appointment with urology. The doctor I saw is one of the hardest to get an appointment with, yet somehow he had an opening. He has also created a procedure with another Loma Linda doctor, cryoablation, for which I was a candidate. Instead of a majorly invasive surgery where they would have to flip my kidney upside down and cut out part of the kidney, they used probes to give my cancer frostbite. And my cancer stayed encapsulated, so I didn’t need radiation or chemo.
However, the biggest miracle in this Divine plan came from a simple kidney stone that disrupted my vacation two years ago. You may wonder how a kidney stone was a miracle in all of this? The stone that sent me to the ER was from my left kidney–my clean kidney. Without the stone from my left kidney, we never would have looked into my kidneys further, and most likely would not have found the cancer before it metastasized to other organs or been able to save my right kidney from the damage of the kidney stones. Even now, as I face a fourth surgery to retrieve stones left behind in my right kidney, I know that thanks to my left kidney, I can plan for my future.
Megan Kaatz is an avid reader, baker, and teaches in her spare time.