My WBC kept climbing and by September 2004 it was 57.6 with the lymphocyte count 53.6. In the mean time my platelet count had dropped to 116 (the reference range is 150 – 400). Also by then the lymph nodes in my neck had swollen and were clearly visible and my spleen had enlarged and was bothering me from time to time; both are typical developments with CLL. The oncologist at the IMVS was now talking chemo therapy and had given me a life span of 5 to 10 years, assuming that the chemo would work of which there was a chance of about 50 to 60%.
Various different types of chemo were discussed and if the first one used would fail another one could be tried with an even lower chance of success. I asked the oncologist what would happen if I did not get chemo therapy and though I can’t remember his exact reply it boiled down to the fact that various organs would start shutting down and I would be pushing daisies in no time at all.
Because of all the study I had done about the various forms of cancers I had come to realise that chemo was not the way to go and could lead to an early death from the treatment itself, plus I would suffer from the ugly side effects. However, at that stage I was not aware that there was a more excellent way of dealing with diseases. Notice that I said “diseases” for the steps that I finished up doing can apply to other diseases as well.
By this time something interesting had started to become obvious. It is normal for people at the stage of CLL that I had reached to feel very tired and lethargic. I however was full of energy; in fact I was and still am the most energetic person in my family. If it had not been for the blood test in January 2001 I would not have known that I had CLL until the lymph nodes in my neck started to swell. There is only one thing that I can ascribe this to and that is divine intervention. As a Christian I believe that God is still in the healing business and, having seen a fair bit of evidence for this, I had sought and received plenty of healing prayer ministry, including having the elders of our church anoint me with oil as per the biblical exhortation in the book of James, chapter 5, verse 12.
I also practiced (and still do) positive affirmation like declaring aloud the biblical truth that “by the stripes (wounds) of Jesus I am healed” (Isiah 53:6 & 1 Peter 2:24) and speaking to my body aloud, telling it to come in line with this truth. I also did say aloud things like “I make a demand on my bone marrow to produce only perfect blood cells” and “I command my immune system to take care of my body and remove all faulty cells from my body”. Telling my body the exact blood counts I want it to have is also part of that. This practice is based on biblical principles and has been known for thousands of years. For example in the book of Proverbs 18:21 it says this “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, ….” and in Matthew 21:21 these words of Jesus are recorded: “… if you shall say to this mountain, be moved and be thrown into the sea, it shall be done”. In my case the mountain was CLL and I told it to go as it was an intruder and did not belong in me or to me.
Yet another principle I came across and can be applied is found in Job 22:28 where it states this: “You shall decree a thing and it shall be established unto you; …..”. You can simply decree that you will be healthy and live a long life. So you can see that there is nothing new under the sun.
You will find from searches on the internet that other people also have picked up on these biblical principles (possibly without realising the source) and recommend speaking affirmations and that it is a successful practice. One of the first persons to run with this idea was the French scientist Emile Coue who lived in the 1800s. Probably his most famous affirmation was simple: “Every day in every way I get better and better”. A more recent example is Barbara Hoberman Levine who wrote the book “Your body believes every word you say”. I have not read the book so I can’t vouch for its content but you can read reviews about it at this Amazone site
On top of all this I practised sanctified imagination. I would imagine that I walk up the ramp to the IMVS facility, go to the admin office to advice my arrival and sit down in the waiting room. Next I imagined going into the oncologist’s office, he would pull up the last blood test results and exclaim: Wow, this is incredible, you don’t have CLL anymore. And that is what happened in due time, except that he said: “I don’t know what you are doing here, you don’t have CLL anymore”
Talking about these things reminds me of the importance of not “owning” the disease you are afflicted with. I hear people talking about “my disease this” and “my disease that”. It has become part of them and each time they speak like that it gets further established. Your words either affirm the problem or they affirm the solution. I was always careful about how I spoke about the CLL and I tried to avoid saying that I had CLL. Instead I would say that the oncologist reckons that I have CLL but that the word of God says that I am healed and that I had chosen to believe God rather than the oncologist. As far as I am concerned God has a much better grip on the truth.
This is probably a good place to mention that the diagnoses of CLL never did bother me much. The main reason for that is that I know that my family and I are in God’s hands. In addition to that I am a phlegmatic and life comes easy to me. Furthermore, way before I found my path to healing I was at a church family camp and during one session I received a very strong impression that God was telling me that things would work out well. As you can imagine that added to the peace I had about the future. On top of that, also in the years before finding the healing path, three or four people with prophetic gifting prophesied over me that the disease was not unto death.