Overcoming Pancreatic Cancer

  Dear friends, thanks for your love and support. This is a belated post I had intended to share on February 12, 2021, with good news and thanksgiving:  17  I will not die but live,      and will proclaim what the  Lord  has done. 18  The  Lord  has chastened me severely,      but he has not given me over to death. … 21  I will give you thanks, for you answered me;      you have become my salvation. (Psalm 118:17-18, 21)   God has shown mercy.   I want to thank all of you who have been praying. God is answering prayer. God has spared my life; the tumor has not changed or grown since January. We can continue praying and asking God to make the healing purchased through the sacrifice of Jesus (“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him,   and...

This evening I was discharged and am now back home. No sign of sepsis. I am on blood thinners because the fever could also have been caused by the thrombosis, or blood clot. The new thrombosis was actually in the left renal vein.  God is good and spared my life; thanks for praying!

 Dear friends, Greetings from the emergency room at Hershey Medical Center. I am back here for my third time in just over two months. It has been just about one week since I came off the antibiotics and antifungals for sepsis. I came down with a fever yesterday and was advised to come into the ER.  It has been the most pleasant ER stay of the three. I was given a remote room in a far corner, which has the benefit of being much quieter! I was able to get more sleep last night than on any previous ER visit.  We are still waiting for a diagnosis on the fever. I am back on IV antibiotics as a precautionary measure. Apparently it can take 48 hours to get lab results back on blood cultures. Other lab results seem pretty good. The CT showed a new (second) thrombosis in the portal vein, but really no other changes from previous CT scans.  I may have been a bit dehydrated yesterday and had taken the kids sledding and for a walk in the winter wonderland of a wooded park the da...

 I will try to migrate my updates on the battle with pancreatic cancer here to blogger. Caring Bridge offers useful service, but seems somewhat misleading in how it solicits donations.  I will try to copy lots of old posts and then give today's update. From my Caring Bridge posts: January 24, 2021 Journal Entry by Timothy Hagen — January 24, 2021 Dear friends, Thank you to all of you for your love, prayers, and support. It has been good to be with family these last few days. My GI tract still has some rough moments with all the antibiotics I am taking to fully clear any remnants of sepsis. I will be on this regime for another week and a half. Please do pray that I can get the nutrition I need. I am eating well and we are experimenting with recipes that work with the sensitive GI tract. I am taking enzymes to compensate for the lack of enzymes from the pancreas and biliary system, but it seems they are a far cry from the effectiveness of my body's own digestive enzymes. Thankfu...