At 76, I’m in my 27th year as the pastor of Saint Christopher Church, a Roman Catholic parish in Northeast Philadelphia. Recently, you might say I had an experience of biblical proportions.
My cancer journey began in late 2021 when I began experiencing feelings of sickness, most often after eating. One night in February 2022, however, it became clear food was not the issue.
I’m the kind of guy who can sleep anytime, anywhere, so when the pain in my abdomen got so bad that I couldn’t sleep, I finally told my wife I needed to go to the ER. The doctors there did some testing and scans, but all they found was an infection, so they gave me an IV and antibiotics. After a few days, when I felt better, they sent me home.
In 2021, I started having pain in my left leg. I visited my family doctor, and at first we thought it might be a deep vein thrombosis. When we ruled that out, I saw a vascular doctor in case it might be varicose veins. That doctor had me get an MRI, and after those results came back, I had to get a biopsy. That’s when the doctors confirmed that I had a stage IV tumor in my leg.
I am 40 years old and currently live in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. Although I work as a case manager for an insurance company now, I was previously employed as a full-time nurse. I have always been a busy person with plenty on my plate, so when I started feeling tired and losing weight, I thought it was caused by the stress of my daily routine.
It wasn’t until July 2017 that I couldn’t ignore my symptoms any longer. When I developed a migraine and felt a tremor in my arm and eye, I knew I was about to lose consciousness. I immediately called 911.
Sometimes I think that my timing was just incredible. If I had been diagnosed with cancer a few years earlier, my prognosis would have looked much different than it does today—especially if I had not gone to Fox Chase!
