Return to story

'Lord, I ain't through yet'

December 16, 2007 12:36 am

BY JIM HALL

The Rev. Carlin Dempsey had been away from his church for a month, in Baltimore for more cancer treatment.

When he walked to the pulpit at Kings Highway Baptist Church on a Sunday in October, church members stood and applauded.

"All the cards, the notes, the gifts, the financial gifts, the phone calls, the food," he said. "You've just been so wonderful."

Dempsey's brown suit hung looser than it did before his operation. His color revealed the strain of surgery, and his voice betrayed him twice during his sermon.

But none of the surgeries or chemotherapy treatments seemed to matter when he was in the pulpit.

"Bring every thought into captivity," he told the Stafford County congregation. For as a man "thinketh in his heart," so he is.

Dempsey, 58, preached from 2 Corinthians and Proverbs, advising a spiritual single-mindedness.

But the lesson also described his approach to cancer. He's tried to bring his thoughts into captivity after being diagnosed with colon cancer in January 2005, to live normally in the face of so much change.

One of his nurses helped define the challenge. Soon after diagnosis, she was hooking him to a bag of medicine and saw that he was depressed.

"Look at me," she said.

Dempsey raised his head and looked her in the eyes.

"You are not dying with cancer," she told him. "You are living with cancer."

The words were familiar, even cliche, but they burned into him. Dempsey began to do exactly as she said.

He acknowledged the disease but refused to let it dominate his life.

Cancer became the boorish uncle who had unexpectedly showed up for dinner. Dempsey set a place for the man but was determined not to let him ruin the meal.

A chronic disease

Last year, nearly 1,270 people in the Fredericksburg area were diagnosed with cancer, according to Mary Washington Hospital figures. Nationwide, more than 1.4 million people will get cancer diagnoses this year, according to the American Cancer Society.

These patients undergo surgery, radiation and chemical treatments. And many, like Dempsey, think they are cancer-free. Then the disease returns.

In the nearly three years since diagnosis, Dempsey has twice been told he was cancer-free. The first time cancer returned after four months. The second time it returned after six months.

He's had four surgeries and three courses of chemotherapy. Another round was stopped after eight treatments, when the cancer returned while chemotherapy was under way.

There's evidence that cancer patients are at increased risk of developing cancer again, according to the National Cancer Institute.

But calculating the odds of recurrence for all cancer patients is difficult.

Recurrence varies by type of cancer and its stage at diagnosis, said Dr. Rod L. Flynn, a Fredericksburg surgical oncologist and one of Dempsey's doctors.

Liver cancer, for example, is more likely to return than breast cancer. And a cancer that's moved from the original tumor to a distant spot is more likely to recur than one that hasn't.

"Stage is everything," said Dr. James R. Daniel, medical director for oncology resource services for Mary Washington Hospital.

Many doctors think of cancer as a chronic disease, like diabetes. For this reason, they never talk of "cure" to patients. Instead, they use words like "remission" 0r "disease-free" or "no evidence of clinically apparent disease."

Daniel said he tells patients simply, "You're going to be all right for a while."

Often doctors warn those they treat, "Once a cancer patient, always a cancer patient."

Returned three times

Dempsey's cancer was discovered accidentally, when he developed a strange pain in his chest. Linda Dempsey, his wife, insisted that he get it checked.

A heart doctor didn't like the results of a stress test and ordered a cardiac catheterization. The procedure revealed a blockage in a cardiac artery. Next came an angioplasty and stent.

After the procedure, Dempsey bled unexpectedly. A colonoscopy revealed a cancerous tumor the size of a tennis ball on his colon. The next day he had an operation to remove the tumor.

Afterward the surgeon said his cancer was also in his lymph nodes and called it a "Stage 3C" cancer.

"The initial statement, that you have cancer, is devastating," Dempsey said.

But members of his church soon came to the hospital to pray with him. And later he began a course of chemotherapy with a Fredericksburg oncologist.

Dempsey received 12 chemotherapy treatments over six months. Every two weeks he sat in the oncologist's office while a bag of medicine dripped into his veins.

"There were times when I would pull up in my truck at the doctor's office and sit there and be miserable thinking about it," he said.

Dempsey completed the treatments in August 2005. A CT scan the next month showed no evidence of cancer.

Dempsey described this verdict as the "greatest news I'd ever expect to hear."

But four months later, in January 2006, he developed a pain in his side. Another CT scan revealed a mass.

A second surgery removed a quarter-size tumor from his abdominal wall. The cancer was back, and this time it was outside the colon.

His oncologist plotted a new, more aggressive round of chemotherapy. And by August 2006, the chemicals had apparently worked. A CT scan then and the more advanced PET scan, in December, were negative.

Once again Dempsey believed he was cancer-free. But once again the cancer returned.

In March, another PET scan found two specks on his abdominal wall. This time his Fredericksburg surgeon suggested surgery, his third, but left the choice to him.

Dempsey said it took him but a minute to decide.

"I've got to have the surgery," he told the doctor. "I'm not going to let this stuff defeat me."

A complex approach

By then, Dempsey had a strategy for dealing with cancer, a complicated emotional mix of fear, prayer and determination.

Family members said it's the same way he's lived life: the "go-go" personality of a former Christian high school football coach. Instead of motivating adolescents, he was now motivating himself.

"He's got some fire in him. He's no-nonsense," said Flynn, one of his doctors.

"He was always taking the little David teams and going after Goliath and whipping the fire out of them," said Mark Dempsey, his son.

Dempsey believes that if a cancer patient surrenders emotionally, he or she will suffer physically. Many cancer patients live longer than expected, he said, and he wants to be one of them.

But Dempsey also said he fears dying. He can recite cancer statistics from memory: that cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States and kills 1,500 people a day. Patients who received chemotherapy with him have since died.

He said that when he prays, he asks for more time.

He recalled the biblical story of Hezekiah, who when faced with death asked the Lord for 15 more years.

Evangelist Jerry Falwell, with whom he once worked, took it further, Dempsey said. When Falwell prayed, he asked for 15 years with the right of renewal.

Dempsey told his congregation that he doesn't say, "Oh, Lord I'm looking forward to heaven."

Instead, he prays, "Lord, I ain't through yet. I need a little more time."

He said that cancer has robbed him of stamina. He used the word "discouraged" to describe his feelings, then corrected himself to say he felt "displaced."

To be displaced, he said, is to have the odd feeling that you are somehow separate from your body, detached from what is happening, wondering how much you can endure.

Setting priorities

But his experience also has taught him that life is precious, and that he must do whatever he can to survive. As the sign outside his study says, "The righteous are as bold as a lion."

To Dempsey that means eating when you can't stand the smell of food. It means working when you're too sick to get dressed.

"By the time I got around to tying my necktie, I was worn out," he said.

It means setting priorities and planning for the future. He's now likely to decline a dinner invitation if it interferes with family time. And he's pushing plans for a new gymnasium for the church.

He's also decided that people mean well, but he doesn't want to hear their cancer stories. Every cancer case is different, he said, and it doesn't help to hear about somebody's cousin.

And he doesn't go into a lot of detail when people ask how he's doing.

"I'm coming along," is his standard reply.

Only Linda, his wife, knows how much he's suffered, and he said he's kept a few things from her.

"He thinks he has," she corrected. "I know him. We've been married since 1971."

Church members have described him as inspirational. During his operation in Baltimore, they prayed in groups for 24 hours.

One church member, Ruth Woodward, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2003 and with colon cancer this year. She is now receiving chemotherapy treatments.

"After hearing and knowing what he has gone through, I can pretty much get through my treatments and not feel so downhearted about it," she said.

At church, Dempsey is joined by Linda, who sings in the choir and plays the piano. Matthew, his son, sings, and Mark sings and is the executive pastor. The Rev. Willis A. Dempsey, his father, is a frequent substitute.

Carlin Dempsey said his mother died when he was 10 and his brother was 6. His brother says now that he doesn't remember much about her.

Dempsey prays that this doesn't happen to his granddaughters, Victoria, 4, and Olivia, 2.

The three have rituals to prevent it. He greets them each morning at the church preschool, and they phone him each evening.

"Good night," they say. "I love you. I'll see you tomorrow."

Jim Hall: 540/374-5433
Email: jhall@freelancestar.com