A Very Present Help

By Kara

My name is Kara and I have been happily married for many years with 5 grown children and three beautiful grandchildren.  I also have two step daughters and several grandchildren from a previous marriage that I am still actively involved with as well.  

Easter is my favorite holiday with my family and I look forward to having a house full of kids and family every year.  I enjoy cooking for everyone and then putting on an Easter Egg hunt for the kids.

I was a senior at Slippery Rock University when my biological mother faked and lied for over a year about having breast cancer. My parents were separated, she had a boyfriend and my brother was still in high school.

She told us she had cancer and was given 8-12 months to live. She started having such a hard time just getting around the house and had lost so much weight that I quit college to come home to help take care of her.  My brother was hearing impaired and academically challenged and it was too much for him to handle.

I moved home and got a full time job that gave me flexibility so I could be her caregiver and would take her to most of her appointments.  I would take her to the hospital for chemo and rub her back while she threw up afterwards.  I stayed up with her at night when she cried in pain.

Well over a year later, after her new boyfriend and sister called her out on lying about everything to all of us, she finally broke down and told us the truth that she had initially faked it thinking it would bring my father back to her.  When I asked why she told the truth now, after so long, she replied that, “Ed (her boyfriend) deserved to know the truth”.  Not that her kids or her family deserved to know, but her boyfriend did.  When I asked what she was doing in the hospital when I would take her, she said she was reading the Bible to patients and would ask for bandages and band aids.  I didn’t even have to ask , she was taking medicine to make herself sick and starving herself to lose weight.  

I think the thing that really gutted me was that in an unrelated event, my biological mother and brother had been tugging over a metal bar and the bar came back and hit her in the chest.  My brother didn’t understand how cancer worked and he had thought for all of that time that he caused her cancer when that bar hit her chest.  When he asked her if that’s what caused it.  She replied, “There’s no way of knowing that.”  

I became very bitter and angry with God and honestly, I was not a very good or Godly person over the years afterwards.  I questioned a lot about my faith and everything I had learned.  Over the years I met my current husband and grew our family and that changed me a lot.  However, my biological mom continued to cause trauma in my life once I had a family and our relationship just kept getting worse over the years. Once I became a mother myself, my anger with my biological mom exploded because I couldn’t understand how a mother could let her own child live with such guilt.

Ironically, when I was 42, I was diagnosed with Stage 3, Clark’s level 4 Melanoma.  My emotions were all over the place when that happened and so was my family’s.  I couldn’t understand the fact that my mother lied about having cancer and then I got it.

I had it removed and started Keytruda, an immunotherapy and had 5 treatments and that’s when everything got hectic for me.  Over that period I was getting sick a lot and losing weight because I couldn’t keep down much food.  I woke up one day and my legs gave out and my speech was slurred.  It was then that my family took me to my first visit to Mt. Nittany.  I spent a few days there and went home before going to Danville where I spent three weeks and was transferred to the The Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and saw several teams of specialists after specialists because nobody knew what was going on or happening.

I could barely walk, I couldn’t talk, I didn’t have use of my fingers and hands and ended up on a catheter.  I had several tests run and they tried several medications.  They finally tried IVIG (donated immune system antibodies) and after a few doses, I was able to stand on my feet, use my hands and speak clearly. It was later determined that the Keytruda attacked the part of my cerebellum that controls my motor skills. This happens in 1 out of 100,000 cancer patients!! 

I was officially diagnosed with  ParaNeoplastic Syndrome. I have been getting treatment since 2019 and gone from getting it every week to finally getting it once a month. More than likely, I will need it in some form for the rest of my life because of the permanent damage to my cerebellum.  

At one point, while I was in that hospital, I didn’t know if I was ever going to go home to my family. I cried and cried and started talking to the Lord.  I told him then and there that I decided that if I couldn’t go home with my family, I wanted to go home to Him. I did not want to spend an eternity with the devil.

Since that day in the hospital, I’ve seen the many ways God has worked in my life. I had a few setbacks—I had seizures and was unable to drive for a few years, but during that time I watched all five of my kids, husband, and parents take turns taking me or picking me up from treatment. Not just one or two of them—It was every single one of them who helped.  At one time I looked at my illness as a curse of some kind and now I’m able to say that it was a blessing in disguise that I didn’t know my family needed.  Plus, I would gladly take the cancer every day, all day than to have it be one of my kids, grandkids, parents, or husband have it.

My whole attitude on life has changed.  I stopped asking, “Why me?” and instead ask,  “Why not me?” I started living life with gratitude and I thank God every day for my blessings.

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”
Psalm 46:1