I am thrilled to share that within several hours of our previous post where we described the 10-20 new rapidly-growing tumors (hard to count since some appear to be connected under the skin) that were resisting treatment, we excitedly discovered that the changes we had already made two days prior to begin starving cancer in all 3 ways of making energy (glycolysis, oxidative phosphorylation, and autophagy) were literally an overnight success! (We’ve had to pioneer alternative medicine strategies like this because the only remaining standalone conventional medicine options would be to help Chioma die peacefully.) 

The many new tumors we could see on the skin literally deflated (shrunk) showing what appears to be complete halt to growth, and the primary tumor has been shedding dead tissue 10-20x faster than we’ve ever seen (a very good thing indicating tumor die off and new cells replacing it). I have to say, the overall effect appears to be far more powerful than any chemo or estrogen blocker we’ve ever used. The largest tumor (the original one that ate the whole left breast last summer and spread to bones, lungs, and many places just under the skin) has been a non-healing wound for the past 1.5 years (because of the cancer). Cancer has also prevented the skin from healing, so we have to change the wound dressing every two days to prevent infection and apply cancer-killing treatments to it. It’s very easy to tell when the tumors are trying to grow because they become madly inflamed as they invade and kill healthy cells around them, and the largest tumor also oozes and bleeds significantly. However, ALL the inflammation, oozing, and bleeding literally stopped overnight, and the tumors have continued to shrink (especially notable since this was during a rest period when receiving no chemo). Chioma’s lungs are also now achieving the best tidal volumes (amount of air per breath) she’s ever had while using our home BiPAP — averaging 300-350 ml/breath (a 10-15% improvement), and sometimes reaching as high as the 470s! Her blood CO2 levels are also the lowest they’ve been in 6 months — almost back down to healthy levels. Truly remarkable. And just today, we received lab results back showing the progress of the first 7 days of the cancer starvation strategy: the CEA and CA 15-3 cancer markers have both dropped massively, confirming the success with numbers (view lab results images). Praise God!

We decided on October 30 to start easing into blocking the 3 cancer metabolic pathways using tools we already had while we continue seeking out additional professional help to optimize and improve the strategy. That morning before deciding to make the changes, I spent time on top of a mountain near our home seeking wisdom from God about the decision (I find it easiest to hear God when away from the many distractions of daily life in the wilderness). As clear as I’ve ever discerned the still, small voice of God, I know I heard Him say that very day we had conquered the metabolic pathways because we had obeyed His leadership to do it. He also said the next two priorities He has for us are to kill infections inside tumors that help fuel cancer growth and restore anti-tumor immunity — both of which we’ve also begun to do. I was happy to hear these things, but I wholeheartedly did not expect such rapid results from the metabolic starvation strategy. Praise God!

The three primary things we’re using to starve the cancer to death by blocking all 3 metabolic pathways are:

1. High-dose Ivermectin (working up to 2.5 mg/kg) to block oxidative phosphorylation

3. Avemar (1 packet/day) to block glycolysis

4. Thymoquinone (200-500 mg/day) to block autophagy 

For those interested in more detail, I shared my research notes on these at the end of this post.

While these three treatments have completely turned the tide of the war, they are notably also not the only tools in the tool box being used. I believe the other things we’ve being doing have been critical as well, and this new strategy is helping them work better — Trodelvy (targeted chemo), Orserdu (estrogen blocker), IV curcumin, IV quercitin, Fenbendazole (1 g/day), oral Artemisinin, the Hoxsey protocol, tocotrienol Vitamin E, high dose melatonin, and other things all help more effectively kill the cancer cells we’re starving to death. There is a cumulative effect. If you’re curious about what your support is helping us to do, here’s Chioma’s full medication/supplement list.

We need your help. There is sadly no cure available thru conventional medicine for the aggressive stage 4 breast cancer Chioma is battling, which is why we have to pioneer ahead of current medical limits. However, with God’s help, “all things are possible”, and He has led us to find the most amazing, cutting-edge therapies and practitioners that make curing stage 4 cancer not only possible but entirely achievable. The best conventional therapies (targeted chemo, hormone blocking, etc.) Chioma is using have all failed already (unable to stop cancer progression); it’s only the holistic approach with combined conventional and alternative medicine that has enabled “multi-drug resistance reversal” (enabled treatments to start working again to some degree) and been causing all the progress towards permanent remission (cure) so far. The biggest challenge is the cost, but we also need practical help with the basics of living: food, shelter, transportation, childcare, etc. We are maxing out all available insurance support and government financial assistance; we are living with family who cover all our housing costs; and we are spending very frugally, but also quickly burning through our remaining life savings. At the current rate of spending and support, we would run out of money in several months. While it is truly miraculous that Chioma has recovered as much as she has so far, the battle is not over.

Cancer unfortunately destroyed a very large amount of Chioma’s lungs, bones, skin, and joints, so for the past 1.5 years her ability to breathe, walk, and do many normal living activities has been severely restricted (she nearly died at least 5 times since May 2023 from chronic respiratory failure — the inability to breathe enough oxygen in and enough CO2 out). She is currently doing so much better, but still is unable to breathe on her own without oxygen & BiPAP support, unable to drive, and unable to safely lift or care for our baby the majority of the time. Due to needing full-time support, I have had to become Chioma’s full-time caretaker. As a result, our family has very little income from the limited time I am able to work for pay, and even despite wonderful support already, our (very frugal) living and medical expenses in the past 10 months have exceeded our income (including all donations) by nearly $33,000 this year alone. We anticipate needing to raise at least an extra $3-5k/mo just to keep even for now. There are many ways you can help, and we invite you to consider supporting us. 

If you would like to help, here are some ways you can:

1. Prayer 

We regularly share prayer requests on GiveSendGo. If you’d like to be notified when we send updates, click the “Share” button, scroll down to “Follow”, and enter your email.

2. Financial support

There are multiple options to give:

- GiveSendGo (we pay a 5.5% + $0.30 transaction fee)

- GiveTaxFree (you get a tax deduction for your gift, and we pay a 2.9% + $0.30 transaction fee)

- Zelle to Kyle: 480-797-9984 (no transaction fee)

- Venmo to Kyle: @KyleMalkin (no transaction fee)

- Cash App to Kyle: $KyleMalkin (no transaction fee)

- Cash

- Gift cards

- Pay our medical and childcare bills directly: text Kyle at 480-797-9984 to learn more.

We greatly appreciate anything you’re willing to give. Regular monthly support is often the most helpful. 

3. Volunteer

There are multiple ways to help:

- Help drive Chioma to medical appointments (most are 1 hr away from where we live with my parents now in Peoria, so this is usually a half-day commitment)

- Provide a meal

- Provide childcare 

- Help clean our home

Volunteering helps free me to work more. Driving support is especially helpful. To volunteer, text Kyle at 480-797-9984 to learn more.

If you’d like to receive email notifications when we post updates, sign up on GiveSendGo: click the “Share” button, scroll down to “Follow”, and enter your email.

We’ve been praising God singing this song today. Join us if you like! 

Thank you for fighting with us!

Kyle, Chioma, & Eliana

P.S. For those interested, here are my research notes on Thymoquinone, Avemar, and Ivermectin. 

Some positive updates:

1. Chioma has officially past the 1 year mark from when doctors told us she would only live 2-3 days at most. It has been about 13 months since then, and despite many ups and downs, overall Chioma is not only alive but continuing to recover. Almost no one ever survives very long with cancer being as wide spread as she is dealing with, and we continually thank God for her life and the progress in killing cancer!

2. Chioma is continuing to gain healthy weight, lung capacity, and strength. With the support of the BiPAP, during rehab on a treadmill Chioma was able to even walk 0.4 miles — about 500 feet further than she’s been able to walk at once in over 1.5 years!

Some challenges and prayer requests:

1. While most observable tumors have been slowly shrinking, there are some areas that have been growing faster lately, and we’ve found a handful of new tumors on the surface that have been growing fairly rapidly. Some of this was likely caused by a treatment we did to help Chioma rapidly eliminate early pneumonia twice over the past month (chlorine dioxide), which worked marvelously to keep her out of the hospital but likely reduced the effectiveness of her main tumor growth blocking drug (Orserdu). But some is likely also cancer having developed a level of treatment resistance. We’ve maxed out the amount of Orserdu she can take now and are nearly if not already maxed out on the chemo strength, so optimization has to primarily come from alternative medicines. The many things we’re doing have certainly been working beautifully overall, but it’s just not strong/effective enough yet. Cancer always tries all it can do to adapt and resist treatments, so the primary cutting edge strategy we’re planning with the Lord’s guidance is to block all 3 metabolic processes in cancer cells at once (aerobic, anaerobic, and autophagy) to prevent adaptation that happens when only targeting one or two processes (this is called metabolic plasticity, the mechanism cancer stem cells use to survive chemo, radiation, and other therapies) while also continuing to barrage cancer cells and help the immune system to more quickly detect and kill cancer on its own. I praise God for teaching us how this all works so rapidly and leading us to find the brightest innovators in cancer care. We are currently seeking the help of multiple cutting-edge practitioners that are experts with repurposed drug combinations for advanced cancers to best optimize what we’re doing. Please pray for the right wisdom, favor, strategies, and finances to do all the Lord leads us to do.

2. Unfortunately, for various reasons we’ve lost more than half of our volunteer drivers over the past several weeks, so my ability to work has been reduced due to needing to drive Chioma to appointments around town more days. Thankfully, the number of appointments we have to drive to has been slightly reduced as well, but we still would be very blessed to have more help. Please pray for more help driving, and if God puts it on your heart to help, we would love to discuss it with you. If interested in helping, please text me at 480-797-9984.

With God’s help, we will beat this cancer for good. Thank you for fighting with us!

Great news of great progress:

 1. Chioma’s recent PET scan on September 6th showed for the first time in over a year that cancer in the lungs and lymph nodes is FINALLY slowly retreating. Praise God! The comparison PET scan was from last November, so for it to show progress from back then even before things got very bad this past Spring is excellent. Nearly all the tumors we can see on the surface (dozens) are shrinking too. The tumors in bones are still “innumerable” and overall appear unchanged from November, but some appear less active, and others are not possible to tell whether they’re more or less active but are suspected to be possibly improving. We’re constantly considering whether any improvements to our strategy are possible and wise to make, but for now the Lord has not been leading us to make any big changes yet. Helping the lungs improve fastest is the top priority, and our current strategy is doing that effectively.

 2. Chioma got to celebrate Eliana’s second birthday this week, a great gift! 

 3. The many experimental and naturopathic treatments we’re doing to help healthy cells resist chemo, weaken cancer cells to be more vulnerable to chemo, and cancer on their own are working very well overall. Instead of Chioma’s blood levels dropping to dangerously low levels while on chemo like they often do for many patients, most of Chioma’s numbers have been improving. That said, it is still very necessary to avoid exposure to germs. Even with a healthy immune system, Chioma’s body is fighting an enormous amount of cancer and doesn’t benefit from any extra burden of fighting pathogens too, so please continue taking precautions to avoid spreading germs.

 4. Chioma recently walked the furthest she’s walked in over a year — about 1,600 feet to the nearby park. She also did amazingly well as we travelled up to 7,700 feet elevation earlier this month for a prayer retreat; in fact, she barely needed any extra oxygen compared to at home (1,500 ft elevation)! Chioma still needs oxygen support 24/7 and BiPAP support while sleeping to survive, but her breathing has been improving overall. 

Praise the Lord!

And thank you all who are praying for and supporting us in many ways! This is certainly a community effort.

Some prayer requests we invite you to join us in:

 1. We continually need wisdom and insight from the Lord on what to do. Please pray for us to hear clearly. 

 2. With the current rate of recovery and doing therapies we know the Lord is leading us to do, we anticipate roughly $75k of medical expenses (i.e. costs not covered by insurance) over the next 12 months. Though we still have savings and some assets we can sell (like one of our cars), on a combined income of about $21k/yr currently (me working as much as possible while also a full-time caretaker), that feels daunting. But, we know God will provide. Please pray for wisdom, provision, and peace in the process of trusting God. 

 3. We’ve been diligent to share Jesus’ Good News with many people along the way. Please pray for even more boldness to lovingly do so all the more.

‪‪“Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle; he is my steadfast love and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield and he in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me” (Psalm‬ ‭144‬:‭1‬-‭2‬ ‭ESV‬‬).

Chioma and I recently watched the single most wonderful theatrical production of a Bible story we’ve ever seen: Sight & Sound’s live recorded production of David (we HIGHLY recommend it). David’s Psalm quoted above is stated by David in the production, and it resonates deeply with our hearts as the proper way to give honor where honor is due in our own victories of war, the war against cancer.

Along the way, like Gideon (a highly successful warrior in the Bible) did, I have asked God for signs to confirm His direction at times. One of those signs lately is a funny circumstance, which has also been deeply encouraging. Every now and then, flies get into the house where we live, and as probably everyone knows, flies can often be quite difficult to because they’re so quickly elusive. About a year ago, after many days of failure in killing annoying, germ-spreading flies (a significant health risk at the moment), I decided to start praying like David did when he would use a sling and stone to wild animals threatening his sheep, and later also the giant Goliath. David would ask the Lord to deliver the enemy into his hands, and then miraculously he always won against impossible odds. I started asking God to “deliver the flies into my hands”, and amazingly He has! Every time I ask knowing it is His will (John 10:10, 1 John 3:8, etc.) and believing He will answer (Mark 11:23-24), I’ve literally been able to do what’s been impossible for me my entire life: I often am able to simply reach up in the air to grab and crush the fly in my hands on one of the first tries. Other times, I use a fly swatter and get it often the very first try. When I go to battle along with the Lord instead of merely in my own strength and wisdom, I always win. I’ve even sometimes been able to anticipate the exact flight path of flies before they make a move. Amazing! As trivial and silly as this sounds, it’s actually been a big encouragement for me because the same God who gives me victory in such a small, trivial thing is giving us victory against the giant enemy: cancer.

Chioma is continuing to improve in many regards. Praise God! Her breathing is better, tumors are continuing to slowly shrink, persistent pain is gone, energy levels are improving, strength is returning, her weight is increasing, and more. So much to celebrate. I never want to give the wrong impression that she’s almost fully recovered. There’s still much to go, but it’s important to celebrate even the small initial victories (especially after the year of continually worsening setbacks that’s now behind us). 

One way we celebrated recently was a rehab exercise of testing and retraining her lungs to handle lower air pressures, even despite still being heavily restricted (it’s estimated she has between 25-50% lung capacity now, much better than in the Spring but still very restrictive). On my birthday (Aug 9), we drove up to higher elevations progressively, testing Chioma’s vitals at increments of 500 to 1000 ft elevation increases until we reached Oak Creek Canyon near Sedona by mid afternoon. We came prepared with the BiPAP, lots of oxygen, and a dear friend who helped with caring for Eliana and Chioma. The West Fork trail — the highest point we reached — is at an elevation of 5,325 ft above sea level; our home is at about 1,500 ft elevation, so she successfully handled nearly 4,000 feet of elevation gain very well. Chioma did so well that she was even able to walk nearly 200 feet down to the creek and back on the same amount of oxygen support she uses at home when walking (3 LPM)! This is the very first “hike” we’ve been able to do as a family (one of our favorite things to do) since right after Eliana was born almost 2 years ago. Chioma was quite tired the next day (a good kind of tired), and overall the trip went smoothly and was a great success. What a great birthday gift!

Thank you to the many of you who are supporting us in prayer, driving, childcare, finances, meals, and more! I cannot fully express in words or actions the extent of our gratitude. We could never repay the amount of generosity we’ve received, but we pray God does so even more than has been given! Your generosity has not only helped keep Chioma alive but is helping us win this war against cancer for good. Through a surplus of giving at the end of last year as well our remaining savings, we’ve been able to continue providing Chioma with the best of care, as frugally as possible. The past 6 months we’ve needed to spend on average $3,000/mo more than I’m able to earn and support has been given, but despite operating in the red, we praise God we’ve not gone into debt and still have savings to sustain for some time. Now that we are not constantly in life threatening situations 24/7, I’m starting to work on my deferred tax return for last year. As part of that effort, I’m also organizing a detailed report of medical expenses that I will share with you all in the near future as proactive accountability — so those interested can see how money has been used wisely. We want you to be confident in our stewardship, so if you have any questions or concerns, by all means please ask, and we’ll do all we can to appropriately share. 

One exciting thing we’ve just worked out recently to help those supporting us is a way for people to receive a tax deduction for financial gifts. We’ve partnered with a non-profit called Give Tax Free that specializes in this. While their website is a bit antiquated so the numbers reflected of progress on the giving page will unfortunately most always be out of date (as opposed to being accurate on GiveSendGo), the system works very well. We will continue sending out updates ONLY here on GiveSendGo, and of course you can continue to give however you prefer — either here, or through apps (like Zelle, Cash App, or Venmo), cash, or check so the full gift makes it to us by avoiding processing fees. However, if you’d like to deduct your gift from your tax liability, you can now use GiveTaxFree.

Thank you for fighting with us!

P.S. For those who want to experience the production David I mentioned, here is the link. We enjoy it so much we’ve been listening to and singing along with the soundtrack most days since we first watched it! It’s beyond entertainment; it’s a powerful story that has a timely, encouraging message for us all today. The music is also excellent — masterfully crafted, and even more importantly, beautifully honors God.

We thank God that Chioma was able to celebrate another birthday this year on July 7! God has been so kind!

We’re also immensely grateful that Chioma’s mom was here for about a month helping us with many things including Chioma’s self care and care for Eliana. We cannot thank her enough, and we miss her dearly! We’re also very grateful the Lord has been continuing to provide childcare help.

One small thing that has been bringing us joy lately on a daily basis is Eliana’s developing ability to speak. She is now forming simple sentences and able to communicate many things. The funniest of these developments was this week when she learned the word “need”. She has been able to communicate she wants something for a while now by saying, “I want _____”. However, one evening this week she began upgrading her vocabulary by repeatedly saying, “I need popcorn.” We laughed and began to wonder where she learned that. Most requests since have been “I need ______”, or “I need-want _______” when she really wants something strongly. Lol!

Eliana’s journey in learning the difference between needs and wants is reminiscent of what the Lord has been teaching us as well — discernment in setting priorities wisely during the current crisis. Our normal lifestyle has been derailed in almost every way the past 18 months, and sometimes that feels quite depressing, especially when looking at our finances as well as lost work, ministry, and friendship opportunities. It’s tempting at times to try pushing ourselves to the limit (or even beyond it) to try getting back to a sense of normalcy faster than we should, and that never ends well. We end up exhausted, frustrated, and bewildered. As always, keeping our eyes on Jesus is the only way to have peace, and listening to the leadership of the Holy Spirit is the only way to stay in step with where Father God is leading. It seems most difficult learning to say no to many things we very much want to do. We haven’t always gotten it right, but at least we’re learning and improving!

Chioma’s recovery continues to be slow, but overall there is noticeable progress. For the first time in many months, Chioma’s weight has surpassed 100 lbs. This is a big deal when battling stage 4 breast cancer, which steals the body’s nutrition, causing a person to waste away. Chioma had been unable to maintain weight much above the low 90’s for most of this year, so it’s a significant milestone to be up to 101 as of Wednesday. She’s well on her way to a healthy weight level of around 120. 

Chioma’s improved breathing enabled her to beautifully lead worship at our church last Sunday as well. She led the same song that she sang a few days after miraculously being discharged from the hospital back in September — “Covenant Keeping God”. Her vocal strength is the best it’s been in many months! You can listen here (start at 11:00). With the improvements in breathing, I am no longer constantly on high alert 24/7, which is wonderful! Chioma has even started doing some more basic self care on her own, she’s gained strength, and visible tumors are slowly shrinking. Everyone in the home is more at ease lately.

Despite the progress, our oncologist recently wrote in documentation the maximum expected lifetime for Chioma with the best of conventional medicine can offer is December 31 (i.e. about 5 months). While this may seem depressing and unwelcome news, I’m actually very excited about how very wrong it will be shown to be! On January 1 when Chioma will be much further along in conquering cancer, we will have yet another significant milestone by which to remember God’s miraculous provision in saving Chioma’s life! :) You can see the documentation here if you like. (NOTE: I don’t say this out of arrogance, but rather confidence in believing what we’ve heard God say — that it is His will for her to have a long life. We of course have a stewardship role to play in that coming to pass as well. No matter how impossible that looks at any given moment, we will continue holding on to God’s promises, trusting His guidance, and doing what He says.)

Our oncologist’s perspective is not unexpected at all actually, nor is it malicious. It’s no secret that the curative rate for stage 4 (i.e. “metastatic”, meaning it has spread around the body from its original location) with current standard-of-care chemo, radiation, and surgery is currently and always has been 0%. Our oncologist is one of the most humble and wonderful doctors we’ve ever worked with, and he is fighting with everything he has to help, but the toolset he has just is limited. It can’t get the job done on its own.

Our expanded tool set with alternative medicine has brought in powerful tools that can do things FAR beyond the current limits of conventional standard of care, including fully curing stage 4 cancer (i.e. eliminating cancer AND restoring the immune system’s ability to fend off cancer on its own again so it never comes back). However, even with those great tools in hand, it would be foolish to put all our hope in them. 

The only wise perspective is this: there is no doctor other than God Himself who can get this job done — full restoration of Chioma’s body — and all our hope is in Him! He is leading us to victory, giving us wisdom to put all the pieces together — spiritually, physically, and emotionally. The tools we have as well as the phenomenal medical professionals we get to work with are truly marvelous. Yet, we continue to acknowledge Who has provided them all, and Who exceeds their potential with supernatural intervention when needed.

A great example from Scripture of what NOT to do is King Asa: “In the 39th year of his reign, Asa developed a severe foot infection. Instead of asking God for help, he turned to doctors. He died in the 41st year of his reign and was buried in a mausoleum in the City of David” (2 Chronicles 16:11-14). Asa’s error was not in consulting the doctors but in doing it first INSTEAD of asking God. 

In another place, the Bible states: “This is what the LORD says: ‘Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the LORD. He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives’” (Jeremiah 17:5-6).

The issue is in whom we put our trust. If we limit our decision making to human wisdom, the end results will ultimately not be good. However, whatever the Lord directs one to do will always be blessed and fruitful in the ways God wants.

“Blessed is the man [i.e. person] who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers” (Psalm 1:1-3 ESV).

One prayer request we have is regarding further refining our war strategy. The progress we’re seeing is wonderful, but it’s also very slow (i.e. it seems as though it could take many years to get rid of all the tumors at this pace). We sense the Lord leading us to add in several cutting-edge therapies to help speed up the process and jump 

start the immune system’s cancer-killing ability. Please pray for wisdom, guidance, and provision.

Thank you to everyone fighting with us — for your prayers, support, and friendship! We thank God for you all.

We’re celebrating that last month we observed for the first time in a long time a significant drop in cancer markers (that indicate how much/fast cancer is growing), which means we’re making progress both killing the cancer and preventing it from growing as quickly. Up until this point, between chemo treatments the cancer had been dying but then growing back almost as much as it had just died, and it had been showing up in new spots like the eyelid tumor described in the previous update too. The cancer markers had also been going up faster and faster since starting chemo (not good). Our team believes adding Solomon’s Seal — a natural EGFR blocker we discovered via research and then bought on Amazon — was a primary contributor to the dropping numbers (indicating slower growth) since it was the only significant change made prior to the numbers dropping. Also amazingly, all of a sudden a brand new growth-blocking drug (Orserdu) was also approved later in the month by insurance after months of appeal and added to our regimen just recently too — a total and welcome surprise that appears to be slowing the growth so much now that tumors even shrunk some days during the “chemo-off-week” from the smaller amounts of cancer-killing treatments we use between chemo infusions like IV curcumin, Fenbendazole, and Ivermectin. (NOTE: for our friends following who are battling cancer and those who work as cancer researchers/medical professionals, we made an amazing discovery thru our naturopath that while IV curcumin given the day after chemo has some benefit, when given the day before chemo at high concentrations, it both enhanced tumor of chemo by 1.5-2x and also helped mitigate nearly all noticeable chemo side effects compared to times we did it after chemo; scientific literature on curcumin for cancer supports this conclusion.) For the first time since Chioma was no longer able to tolerate high dose IV Vitamin C last fall, I believe we now actually have a competent line up of effective cancer-killing treatments again. This includes initial immune-system-restorative ones like the Hoxsey protocol we began in Mexico recently. We’ve also come across several additional amazing therapies for immune restoration that we are prayerfully considering for “phase 2” (what we call the phase of helping the immune system to learn to recognize and cancer again on its own for long term success) in the near future. Praise God for His remarkable provision! 

We’re also very grateful that Chioma’s mom has come out to help us with Chioma and childcare for several weeks. This fills a big gap in our childcare needs temporarily. We’re still working through options for between when she leaves and when our church’s daycare reopens after flooding restoration work is done (hopefully in August). Please continue to pray for wisdom and thank God in advance for how He will meet all of our needs as He has promised (Matthew 6).

Thank you all for your prayers and ongoing support! We could not be doing most of what we’re doing without your help. There are far more ways that many of you have helped us than I could possibly acknowledge here, but I do want to highlight a few of the most amazing gifts recently in regards to how they showcased God’s amazing timing in provision. First, we’ve had an issue with our oxygen tank supplier for many months where they would occasionally run short on tanks, requiring us to ration oxygen. This unfortunately resulted in a few times we ran out of oxygen while on the road, jeopardizing Chioma’s life. We sought the Lord and sensed His leading to buy a portable oxygen concentrator that could at least meet the majority of Chioma’s baseline oxygen needs, which cost about $2,000. That same week, a gift of $2,000 came in completely unexpectedly! Also recently, for various reasons it had been impossible to get Chioma to PEMF therapy for several weeks, which is one of the most important treatments we do to support her bones, boost energy levels, and eliminate pain. The clinic is about an hour away, and thus a 4-hour commitment per day; it also must be done at least 2-3 times per week to be effective. Long story short, the Lord led us to buy our own PEMF machine so Chioma can do it at home daily, which cost about $16,000. We had been waiting on an insurance reimbursement from last July that was finally just recently approved, which was nearly the same amount as the PEMF machine we bought! Chioma’s pain level is effectively at 0 out of 10 most of the time again since she started using it. We will continue going to that rehab clinic periodically for additional purposes, but it’s such a great blessing to have PEMF available for Chioma daily now.

God greatly bless you all!

"Thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ” (2 Cor 2:14).

This passage from the Bible expresses the overflowing gratitude of our hearts daily right now. We give the glory to God for continuing to rescue and restore Chioma, amidst the ups and sometimes fairly severe downs. 

One of the biggest highlights we’re celebrating is that as of the final day in May, the pattern of Chioma being hospitalized every other month for respiratory failure is now officially broken (she was hospitalized in March, and she made it through May)! Praise God! One way we celebrated was by visiting family in California. Last June, we’d planned to do so but spent a month in the hospital instead. We’d hoped all year to get to visit this summer, and the Lord has blessed us with that opportunity — especially through our family paying our way nearly entirely. So very grateful. 

Chioma is doing much better than several weeks ago when her breathing got very bad again. There were many factors involved in the breathing worsening, but bottom line, there were two main failures on our end that majorly contributed: 

First, our oncologist explained that when using chemo, the regrowth of tumors between chemo infusions is normal and to be expected — it’s often two steps forward, one step back when chemo is working at its best. Chioma later told me she had initially resigned herself to this being the best to expect, despite sensing the Lord was speaking to her at the same time to not settle for allowing cancer to regain ground like this. I knew we could do better too with the many additional tools we have access to, but I was initially not as aggressive in searching out additional options as I knew in my heart I needed to be. 

Secondly, we are freshly reminded of why it is critical to make decisions WITH the Lord and not merely rely on our own wisdom. We had heard from a doctor and read that taking the powerful supplement NAC (a precursor to glutathione that helps the body detox and greatly reduce lung inflammation) can hinder chemo’s effectiveness (chemo causes huge amounts of oxidative stress to cancer cells, so powerful antioxidants like NAC can partially neutralize it, thus protecting both healthy AND cancerous cells). Chioma had been taking 600-1,200 mg/day of NAC on and off for many months. We decided to stop the NAC altogether to help chemo work even better. And we didn’t bother to ask the Lord for His input. BIG mistake. We also added a new alternative cancer treatment — high dose melatonin (since it has powerful anti-cancer benefits and was recommended by a doctor we consulted). However, we began at a rapidly increasing pace of the melatonin we’d seen others do successfully, and again WITHOUT asking God for His input. That likely also contributed to respiratory distress. 

We stoped the high dose melatonin after several days of issues we attributed to it. We didn’t put the pieces together regarding NAC until our wonderful oncologist nurse consultant who coaches us in managing the combination of alternative and conventional meds pointed out that cutting the NAC may have caused an undiagnosed recurrence of severe lung inflammation making it so difficult to breathe. The Lord confirmed this was true when we asked. Upon resuming NAC, Chioma’s breathing began improving daily, and it continues being very helpful the past several days since the steroids given at chemo time (to reduce inflammation) have long worn off. Lesson re-learned: it’s never a good idea to make decisions with merely our own wisdom! 

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones” (Proverbs 3:5-8 ESV).

“My son, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. Let them not escape from your sight; keep them within your heart. For they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh. Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:20-23 ESV).

Amen!

One of the most profound ways the Lord additionally challenged our perspective on settling for the “two steps forward, one step back” approach was by independently leading Chioma and I both to read Exodus 23, without each other’s knowing the other was doing so or initially understanding why God led us there. Exodus 23 tells of when the Israelites were being led by God away from Egypt where they’d been slaves and towards the Promised Land (Israel) by Moses after they’d crossed the Red Sea. God told them that He would drive their enemies out as they went, AND that He’d cause their hands to do the fighting successfully! If they were to obey His leadership, He would “remove all sickness” from them and cause them to live to the full number of days He wanted them to live as opposed to dying from sickness (Exodus 23:25-28). God also explicitly told the Israelites He would progressively drive out all their enemies or else wild beasts in the conquered land would overrun them. He also said to leave no enemies living. Of course, if you know the rest of the story, the Israelites didn’t do this very well, and it is recorded as an example for us to learn from regarding God’s unchanging character and the potential consequences of our choices. God allowed them to disobey and experience the outcome, but He also still continuously extended mercy and grace to help them get back on His path, which they did at times. This jumped off the page to us — this is the same pattern of how He is leading us to drive out cancer.

We have at times been too tolerant of the cancer — out of weariness being complacent with some of it remaining. Rather, the solution is to keep listening to God’s guidance in all the many ways He speaks — through His written Word, to our hearts with His Spirit’s “still, small voice”, through people, through circumstances, etc. Friendship with God is not a formula anymore than killing cancer is. And we will continue doing best by asking Him for the wisdom He promises to give when we ask (James 1:5), and of course obeying. After all, Scripture says He already did the hard work for us — “by His stripes we were healed” (1 Peter 2:24, Matt 8, Isaiah 53, Acts 10) giving us the right to receive healing through trusting Him — both now during our limited stay in our current bodies that will eventually expire, and in eternity with Jesus where there will be no more sickness whatsoever.

Right now, the most urgent cancer killing strategy involves halting and destroying a new mass that’s been growing rapidly on Chioma’s right eyelid, which has grown at least 3-5x larger in the past week or so. When using chemo, surviving cancer cells have the potential to get more aggressive. Our oncologist also stopped the hormone drug that slows down tumor growth because it’s standard of care for conventional medicine to do so when using Trodelvy chemo (yet another of the many ways conventional cancer care on its own is insufficient for curing late stage cancer). We’re also dealing with multiple variations of breast cancer at once (some HER2+, some HER2-, and some HER2-low), and Trodelvy chemo isn’t as effective on some kinds as it is on others unfortunately. The eyelid tumor is a major challenge, but we’re fighting better now than we were before. We have begun several new strategies we believe the Lord is leading to help address these issues (which thankfully seem to have already started helping slow down the growth), and we would love for you to continue focusing on this in prayer with us specifically. 

We travelled to Northern Mexico on Thursday to visit an alternative cancer clinic, which added several more powerful alternative medicine tools to our cancer-killing arsenal as well (strong enough that they have even single-handedly cured pancreatic cancer many times, which is completely incurable by conventional medicine), at a very reasonable cost compared to anything in the US, and included the single most comprehensive evaluation we’ve received from any oncology team ever by far. The Lord amazingly opened doors for us to get a last-minute appointment when there were no official openings, provided wonderful drivers for transportation to and from Tijuana, and gave us great favor with everyone involved. One of the biggest helps was the doctor who reviewed everything on our very long list of meds and supplements in great detail, confirming we have an excellent holistic strategy and further optimizing it.

Another of our biggest needs right now is childcare. Unfortunately our church’s daycare is now closed for the rest of the summer due to flooding damage in the building, and our main babysitter is unavailable starting in about a week. Our church’s daycare and those helping with childcare have been amazingly generous towards us in our time of need with it costing little to nothing. We are burning through savings spending far more than I make every month on fighting cancer, so this has been tremendously helpful. We are searching for help now but have limitations — ordinary daycare where Eliana would be exposed to germs from other kids all day is not a good option, and nannies are very expensive. If you have any ideas or would like to help, we welcome your input and support.

Thank you for fighting with us!

We're thanking God that Chioma is making progress with breathing better. There's still much more restriction than a week ago, but she has done well enough to start spending longer periods of time off the BiPAP during the day, and even start doing a bit of basic self care tasks again (like walking short distances in the house without needing my assistance every time). My brother and sister-in-law have been helping watch Eliana lately, and this photo was taken at their place yesterday evening on the way home from an appointment. As Chioma has been improving, I've started getting a bit more rest to recover from exhaustion, though I am still fairly tired. I would appreciate prayer for me too. Thank you for fighting with us!

Please join us in praying specifically for Chioma's lungs to open up. The past three days she has unfortunately needed to use the BiPAP almost 24/7 again. She's been doing slightly better since Thursday's chemo infusion, but still is struggling a lot. We aren't entirely sure what's going on, but it seems cancer is trying to take advantage of the time off between chemo treatments, and she also was struggling to sleep well for about a week until last night (which we suspect was related to a supplement she'd be taking). The breathing is not as bad as before we started chemo, but it is still a setback we of course do not want. God has been and will of course continue giving strategic wisdom, and we will continue to rest in His promises to rescue Chioma. Please join us in praying.

‪‪It is so wonderful that Chioma has been continuing to rapidly recover daily since the miracle of her singing at church 3 weeks ago. She’s gained weight, tumors have shrunk, her breathing has greatly improved, her blood counts are better (this itself is a miracle while undergoing chemo!), she has more strength and energy, she’s able to be off the BiPAP most of the day, and she’s walking around the house unassisted for most activities now. There’s still a long way to go, but we’re so grateful for the progress. Amazingly, she has also had essentially zero side effects from the chemo! (The side effects she experienced the first chemo infusion were entirely from Benadryl, not the chemo!) We’re continuing to stand on God’s promises in Mark 16 that no poison shall harm her. And we’re thanking Him for using it to help cancer! We’re also very grateful for the carnivore diet and Chioma having stopped the anti-estrogen cancer treatment a month ago, both of which are helping her body rebuild quickly.  

We were scheduled to lead worship at church again a week ago. We thank God for a church that embraces us and allows Chioma to lead worship in her current state. Chioma sang for multiple songs, over the course of an hour this time, standing for much of it! You can watch the service recording here. Start at about 13:00. 

Chioma has been doing so well that we even were able to visit my grandmother for Mother’s Day out of town, which was a wonderful time.

In the midst of this phase of recovery, we are deep into researching next steps, continually seeking the Lord for wisdom and guidance. We’ve made the mistake in the past numerous times when starting to experience progress of becoming distracted by trying to get back to life as usual, thus not remaining aggressive/attentive enough in the fight, and ultimately falling behind. Regarding stewardship of helping Chioma recover, I believe there are two phases to recovery from cancer, and other than miracles along the way (which we continue to ask for), the body’s recovery process God created doesn’t happen overnight, so there’s still much work to be done.

The reason for two phases is because merely killing cancer doesn’t cure what caused it in the first place, which is why for people who only do conventional medicine, cancer almost always comes back eventually (which is why it’s generally considered in “remission” when no longer detectable, not cured). While cancer is caused by a complex cascade of problems including pathogens, carcinogens, mishandled stress, and many other things, it seems that cancer can be summed up as simply “immune system failure”. (A healthy immune system kills cancer cells all day every day in a healthy person’s body.) However, helping the body repair that systemic failure does not seem to be simple at all, at least from what I understand currently. 

I think a good analogy for how cancer works is that it’s like terrorism. Enemies (pathogens, carcinogens, etc.) invade the body and hijack a person’s vulnerable cells. They turn those cells into factories to produce illegal goods (corrupt DNA, metabolic processes, etc.), hide from police (the immune system) through complex disguise mechanisms (live inside tumors, override the immune system’s natural processes for killing cancer, etc.), and steal the body’s resources until the person either dies or fights back successfully. It’s such a complex operation that no two doctors I’ve read or spoken to fully agree on any one theory about how all this works! Yet despite the many unsolved mysteries of the human body, there are many interventions that have been remarkably helpful for many people. 

I believe the two phases of fully curing cancer (i.e. not merely achieving remission) are: (1) killing cancer, and (2) immune system restoration. Ideally, one does both at the same time, but to some degree there is often a need to focus more on one before the other, as in our case. 

Conventional cancer medicine as of today is generally only effective at phase 1 and offers very little for phase 2, yet (there are some amazing things currently in development). Alternative medicine is sometimes less effective at phase 1 (depending on the protocol one uses), but has remarkable successes in accomplishing phase 2 (for some people). However, unlike conventional medicine that is rigorously tested and has trillions of dollars of funding, the biggest problem with alternative medicine is that there are seemingly few practitioners (or are just hard to find) who consistently get great results, there are genuine frauds out there, and virtually no insurance covers treatments that are very costly (since insurance doesn’t cover it). Navigating this field successfully is very difficult, which is why many never even attempt it. Yet, with God, all things are possible. 

I’ve been educating myself in medicine as quickly as I can to best serve Chioma for the past 5 years. It is my God-ordained responsibility as Chioma’s husband to love her second only to Jesus, and it is my great joy to do so. God has been giving me wisdom far beyond my training and skills (my college degree is in music, not medicine), and He continues helping me use it effectively. I say this only to brag on God, not myself — two weeks ago, our oncologist told me I deserve a PhD for how much I’ve learned and have successfully used in helping save Chioma’s life over and over (I’ve even graciously corrected him on multiple occasions). I cannot take credit for all this wisdom and knowledge. It says in Proverbs 24:6, “for by wise guidance you can wage your war, and in abundance of counselors there is victory.” We are so grateful to have a large team of wise counselors — both alternative and conventional medicine experts. We’ve sought out the most successful, innovative, and genius practitioners we could find, but honestly, every single one of our primary team God dropped into our lap. Chioma’s long list of meds and supplements is strategically crafted with input from many experts and much prayer. Ultimately, God is our Primary Doctor, and He is excellent! I can’t recommend Him highly enough! The great news is He works for free! And He provides all we need to pay for whatever He recommends to help — much of which many of you all have given! :)

While phase 2 often looks and feels impossible, we know God will work it out as we continue to follow His lead. Please continue to pray for His wisdom, resources, and peace for us.

“The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord” (Proverbs‬ ‭21‬:‭31‬ ‭ESV‬‬).

Thank you for fighting with us!

We have multiple miracles to report. I’m not sure which is the greatest miracle. What do you think?

 1. I’ve been cooking all week for Chioma, and the food has actually tasted good! I don’t enjoy cooking, and never have. So I almost never cook. As an entrepreneur, I’ve always considered it a waste of my time when I could be doing more productive things. For that reason, I’ve lived on frozen and canned meals most of my life, unless someone else cooks for me (praise Jesus I married a great cook!). I’ve learned a few things over the years from Chioma, but I pretty much have always delegated myself to clean up crew (which I much prefer) so Chioma can thrive at cooking. I still have her guidance now, but this week I’ve had to be lead chef. And by God’s miraculous grace (I’m not joking), I’ve actually been experimentally modifying recipes to make them work for Chioma’s restrictive diet, and it’s all turned out well! In fact, I wanted to help give her something more tasty than the primarily ground meat, eggs, and yogurt she’s been eating, so I bought organic lamb ribs (lots of protein and good fat). I’ve never cooked lamb, let alone ribs, in my entire life. And with a little encouragement from Chioma, improvisation, and reliance on God’s wisdom, it actually turned out to be possibly the best tasting meat I think I’ve ever eaten! Chioma has been in awe, and so have I. Thank you, Jesus, for helping even in the simple aspects of life like food!

 2. Last Sunday when we led worship at church, it was truly no small ordeal. God had told us He wanted us to lead worship on that day about a month prior when we were invited, but leading up to the day, Chioma’s breathing was getting worse over the week, even with nearly 24/7 life support of the BiPAP on essentially maximum strength at home (there wasn’t a whole lot more, if anything, they’d be able to do at the hospital if it had gotten much worse). The Holy Spirit nudged multiple people to encourage us — that God Himself would give the strength to make it possible for Chioma to sing. So we drove to church, with Chioma using the BiPAP machine on the way, in expectation of a miracle. And we received one! As you hopefully read and watched in the update from Monday, Chioma not only survived being off the BiPAP for several hours, she sang powerfully! If you haven’t watched it yet, I encourage you to do so! God is faithful to His promises!!! After leading worship, Chioma said her breathing was MUCH better. She used the BiPAP the majority of the afternoon, but she even spent some time in the evening off the BiPAP as well. That evening, a dear friend of ours attended a revival service led by Mario Murillo where hundreds of people surrendered their lives to Jesus, and many miracles happened. Our friend stood in proxy for Chioma to receive healing in her lungs. Chioma’s breathing has continued getting significantly better daily since last Sunday!

 3. On Monday, chemo day 1 went relatively smoothly, with relatively minimal side effects. The worst side effects were actually not even the fault of the chemo! They gave a high dose of Benadryl per protocol with the chemo, which unfortunately depressed Chioma’s breathing, causing her to need extra oxygen. I caught this issue and alerted the team. She was stable by the time the nurse practitioner arrived, and so we proceeded with the chemo. I decided to go buy lunch after a few hours of being with Chioma (it was a 5-hour infusion), but the Lord told me to wait a while longer before going. I didn’t know why, but I obeyed. About 15 minutes later, I noticed Chioma’s breathing had worsened further while she slept, and the team would almost certainly not have caught it until it was too late since the BiPAP breathes for her much of the time while sleeping. I made the necessary adjustments and woke her to do a wellness check (make sure she hadn’t succumbed to CO2 narcosis). Praise God, she was alert and stable. When I got the go ahead from the Lord that all was well, then I went to get lunch. Everything went smoothly for the rest of the infusion. Chioma had a persistently elevated heart rate later in the day, which could have been from the chemo but may more likely have been from the breathing episode. Our cardiologist was not concerned about the high heart rate and advised us to wait it out; it was normalized by morning. 

 4. While chemo is usually tiring (oftentimes exhausting) for many people, Chioma has oppositely had increased energy and appetite daily since receiving chemo! The cancer clinic we are working with is excellent in providing supportive meds, but none of them were completely confident this chemo would even work. The Lord is causing all things to work well. We and many praying for us have been believing to receive God’s promises of protection in this situation — for the chemo to cancer as intended and not harm her healthy cells. It seems to be exactly what is happening. Tumors are visibly shrinking already, and Chioma is putting on small but noticeable amounts of healthy weight (she’s been about 30 pounds under a healthy weight, so it is critical to gain weight). She’s been enjoying life much more lately! The simple abilities to breathe, eat, and talk have never been more appreciated. She even had the strength to go via wheelchair to the community pool with Eliana, our wonderful babysitter, and I on Thursday. Sometime mid-week, I found myself thinking, “It feels like my wife has come back from the dead!” It truly does! While we have a very long way to go in recovery still, this turn around has been such a very refreshing blessing! We give thanks and praise to Jesus, and we continue look forward with expectation to full restoration!

Thank you to all who are praying for and supporting us in many ways!

We're wrapping up the chemo infusion. Other than the high dose Benadryl slowing her breathing down so she needed some extra oxygen, all went very smoothly. We have 20 minutes of monitoring left, and then we'll be on our way home. Thank you, Jesus!

Update from Chioma:

I journaled these thoughts today and thought I’d share:

MIRACLE!!! This time yesterday, I could barely eat and breathe at the same time. This morning, God’s grace met me to help lead worship. 

Here’s a short clip:

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxwLLttqZVtvV4VLPRuKF5aSjYgaYm5_h4?si=28sYJ2uRvUI_Chir

If you want to watch the full worship service, here’s a link to that: https://www.youtube.com/live/XD9GUKSdo8E?si=76dn7UILhjk0Pq_D

I’ve been reflecting on the experience today. A friend sent me Psalms 89:1-4 (MSG):

“Your love, GOD, is my song, and I’ll sing it! I’m forever telling everyone how faithful you are. I’ll never quit telling the story of your love— how you built the cosmos and guaranteed everything in it. Your love has always been our lives’ foundation, your fidelity has been the roof over our world. You once said, “I joined forces with my chosen leader, I pledged my word to my servant, David, saying, ‘Everyone descending from you is guaranteed life; I’ll make your rule as solid and lasting as rock.’”

Today marks 7 months from when the doctors at Shea hospital told Kyle I’d be dead within 3 days. That was last September, and I led worship a few days after I got out. Every time since then that I’ve been on the schedule to lead worship (3 times), I’ve been hospitalized. But, not today! I came uncomfortably close as I have gone to the hospital before for lesser symptoms than what I’ve been experiencing for the past few days (lung restriction to the point it’s even been difficult to breathe while using the BiPAP). This time I knew the devil didn’t want me to help lead worship and that God did. Though I didn’t know how I would do it, I expected God to meet me and empower me on stage. And, He did. I think my expectation lately has been too low — expecting God to meet me and help me lead worship, but maybe not help me as much off the stage. I believe God has already provided for my healing, and God’s grace is available just as much to make my voice strong off stage as on stage. I’m being corrected, I’m learning, and I love Him for His faithfulness.

Update from Kyle:

Tomorrow, is Chioma’s first day of chemo. We would appreciate your prayers. 

Also, per multiple doctors’ advice, she is beginning a carnivore diet consisting primarily of organic meats, eggs, ghee butter, A2A2 yogurt, and such to help her tolerate chemo best and rebuild her body. I am not a cook, and I need help in this department! Haha. Pray for me as I experiment! If you are a good cook and would like to help in any way, we welcome your assistance also!

A special thank you to my brother and sister-in-law for helping clean our house on Saturday, making it a cleaner environment for Chioma. And thank you very much to those who have been supporting us financially. We started chemo-protective IVs at our naturopath on Friday, and we plan to do them the day before and after each chemo treatment (tomorrow, next Monday, and every 3 weeks after that). Each visit costs between $300-900. This on top of all the other expenses adds up quickly, and we so greatly appreciate your partnership! 

Thank you for fighting with us!

Sorry for the late post, but just wanted to share the good news. It's been about an hour-and-a-half since sending my update. Just now I noticed that while Chioma was sleeping, her lung tidal volumes (how much air she is breathing in and out) have gone up about 15%! I've never seen a positive change like that happen so fast! I give credit to Jesus answering prayers!

It’s been difficult to find time to write an update. In the hospital, we had help from nurses 24/7. At home, I’ve taken over many of those responsibilities, 24/7.

The past two weeks have been very challenging. Chioma spent much of the first week using the BiPAP (almost all day, every day) because her lungs constricted even worse than when in the hospital shortly after getting home. No one knows why exactly, but the worsening of breathing restriction is strongly suspected to be primarily due to cancer growth. Thankfully with our BiPAP settings improved, we’ve been able to support her breathing at home well enough to avoid being hospitalized all over again. However, that has also meant I’ve needed to drop nearly everything to be a fulltime nurse for her in many more ways than usual. Thank you to everyone who has been patient with us, and especially to all who have stepped up to help! 

Over the past several weeks, we decided to get more aggressive in helping Chioma’s breathing improve. We significantly increased doses gallium and Fenbendazole (experimental cancer drugs that we’ve been doing DIY, with expert guidance and monitored by our oncologist), determining doses each day by asking the Lord how much to use. We also increased the amount of “Dissolve It All” she takes, a multi-enzyme supplement that helps dissolve scar tissue; from what we see outwardly, it works remarkably effectively as many of Chioma’s large surgical scars have been rapidly shrinking/disappearing! We’re hopeful it will help ease lung restriction from the pleurodesis surgery scarring last summer (the primary cause of all the severe breathing restriction overall; we wish we hadn’t done that unnecessary surgery!). We’ve also continued being very aggressive with the naturopathic frankincense-based treatments. Within a week, Chioma was using the BiPAP much less, able to sustain her breathing through most of the day on her own. A dear friend came to pray for her last week; afterwards, her breathing improved further, and her belly that had been bloated for longer than I can remember (probably 6 months or more) also quickly shrunk to a much healthier size. It was a miracle! Chioma was doing well enough that we even were able to bring her to the park with Eliana a few times, which was a great blessing. :) There have been several more difficult days lately where Chioma has needed the BiPAP support much more, especially today. There has been a worsening of her lung tidal volumes (amount of air breathed in and out) using the same BiPAP settings we went home with. 

Unfortunately, despite all we’re doing and the successes, we’ve reached a point where all we’re doing is not stopping the many tumors (“innumerable” according to one of the PET scans) from growing overall. We are prayerfully and carefully weighing multiple changes that need to be made to be as aggressive as necessary to best support Chioma.

On that note, we have decided to go forward with using the targeted chemo, Trodelvy, at 50% strength on Monday, and use some naturopathic IV’s to help prevent damage to healthy cells. We kindly ask that anyone who interacts with us or our extended family please take extra careful precaution to avoid exposure to germs, and if sick to avoid spreading germs. The most common side effect of chemo is lowered immunity (due to lowered white blood cell counts), so reducing exposure to germs helps protect Chioma. We have never wanted to use chemo, but we are grateful for God’s provision of it as a tool to help. 

We are also continuing to confidently hold onto the vision God gave us of complete restoration, fighting to keep our eyes on Him at all times, and speaking to the “mountain” in front of us to be cast into the sea, as Jesus said to do. God has good things in store for us, and we will see them in the land of the living!

There are many very important decisions to be made, and we greatly appreciate your prayers and support! Thank you for fighting with us!

First, an explanation of the photo chosen for this update: it symbolizes a direct fulfillment of Psalm 23: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” This week has been full of very serious and frightening attacks on Chioma’s health post-hospitalization, and yet we have resisted by receiving God’s peace and provision in the midst of the fight. The photo was a lunch stop on the Wednesday road trip across town for Chioma’s rehab/PEMF therapy, which required two helpers for Chioma this time — our friend Nancy and myself.

There is so much that’s happened since Chioma and I got home from the hospital, and I don’t have time to cover it all. Here’s the overview:

When we left the hospital, we went straight to my brother Dana’s house, where the family Easter dinner was just about to begin. God’s timing was amazing! We only stayed for a little over an hour, but it was a great, heart-warming time of fellowship with loved ones and excellent food!

We are loving being able to get decent sleep at night now, and good amounts at that! It’s been so great to be with Eliana and my parents too, and Chioma has loved getting out of the house for appointments. Enjoying fresh air and sunlight again is wonderful.

It has been far from easy though. Had we stayed any longer at the hospital, they might not have discharged Chioma. Her breathing became much more restricted over the following 24 hours to the point she could hardly tolerate having the BiPAP off. She’s described it as feeling like her lungs are being squeezed from outside, and someone is sitting on her chest. The work of breathing on her own has become very tiring, making it very difficult to do anything when off the BiPAP — eat, drink, talk, walk, etc. If we didn’t know the Lord was at work in rescuing her, we might have been terrified. 

The naturopathic oral and topical products we recently started using that consist of frankincense, myrrh, hysop, and a handful of other things have caused remarkable progress on the surface of many of the tumors — they’ve stopped bleeding, and many have slightly shrunk at the surface level (some that shrunk at the surface actually even continued growing under the surface during the same time period, strongly proving the effectiveness of the products at surface level). We had ordered an IV version too, which arrived during the hospital stay, and we hired someone to administer it at home on Monday evening. We also have been daily injecting very small doses of it into many of the hundreds of small tumors on the surface. Our friend who connected us with these treatments used only these products combined with a form of PEMF therapy and prayer to a large brain tumor she had recently, and we’re thrilled that it’s helping us as well! Since the IV treatment, Chioma’s breathing has been slightly easier each day. It’s still extremely difficult to breathe on her own, but she tolerated nearly 5 hours off the BiPAP today and ate very well! These treatments cost us $7,500 this week. We are celebrating God’s amazing generosity thru a donor who recognized our financial situation pledged to pay for any additional treatments using these products needed! WOW! We are so very grateful!

Today at Chioma’s oncologist appointment, we also received some very helpful confirmation regarding why the conventional cancer treatments have been largely ineffective since we began them last July, doing little more than slowing growth. It’s a long story, but bottom line — genetic testing of the lung biopsy from last summer proved that the HER2+ immunotherapies were the wrong treatment for the HER2- cancer found in the lungs and elsewhere (though it seems to have been helpful for the HER2+ tumors in bones at least). That means ultimately we’ve been using the wrong treatments since last July. No one could tell this was the case by the reports that were all done properly. I believe it was the Lord nagging at me for months to challenge the facts shown on paper until we discovered through extra investigative testing that this was in fact the case today. This especially helps explain why the lungs were getting worse when we could see other places getting better. An alternate drug (Trodelvi) that is a monoclonal antibody paired with a moderate chemo is recommended to replace the previous immunotherapies. It is less strong than traditional taxol chemo (which we’ve been very intentionally avoiding per the Lord’s leadership), but would be much more effective than what we’d been doing prior. It’s still chemo at the end of the day, and the potential side effects are very significant. We are strongly considering using it to help break down cancer restricting the lungs faster, and we are seeking the Lord’s guidance and wisdom.

In all these difficulties, we have been very encouraged through dear friends challenging us to keep our focus on the Lord, not get lost in focusing on the details and facts in the natural world around us — “to walk by faith and not by sight.” God is our Good Shepherd, able and willing to care for us far better than we could ever help ourselves!

We are so very grateful for the generosity we continue to receive from many of you all — in finances, prayer, childcare, meals, and more. We truly are not alone. Thank you for fighting with us!

Happy Resurrection Sunday! Jesus the Risen King of the Universe took His seat at the right hand of God the Father about 2,000 years ago in victory, making it possible for anyone to have eternal life through trusting Him. God gave us a victory today as well.

Before I mention the victory, first I'll mention it was very fun having Eliana and my mom visit yesterday. :)

Now the victory: we had a long, but VERY productive night. The substitute pulmonologist we've had since yesterday gave authority to the respiratory therapist from the company that provides Chioma's BiPAP (they're the only ones who have the ability to make changes to the machine) to test out settings on her home machine until we found numbers that worked for her -- the wisest and best move possible. The technician came three different times during the night trying out and testing settings that first were too strong, then too weak, and then just right (each measured with blood gas tests ordered by the hospital team). The best settings helped Chioma get rid of just 1 point of CO2 while sleeping during the final two hours of the night, which is not much; HOWEVER, it's SOOO much better than just maintaining or falling behind as she had been doing when sleeping! Because people's breathing naturally slows down while sleeping and Chioma needs lots of extra support at the moment, it has been very difficult to help her keep up with getting rid of CO2. For perspective, on the weakest home BiPAP settings overnight, she got ahead 7 whole points while awake over just 1 hour. Bottom line: we now have home BiPAP settings that are working! Praise God!

Chioma is napping right now since we didn't get enough sleep overnight. She has one blood test left in about 10 minutes, and if the doctors see the progress they’re hoping to see, we’ll be discharged this afternoon!

Good news, and a prayer request: Chioma's labs looked slightly better this morning, which should clear her medically to go home. However, even though the home BiPAP provider VERY graciously sent someone out late last night to update our BiPAP, we discovered our home BiPAP isn't delivering anywhere near the numbers the hospital BiPAP is, and we don't know why yet. For safety reasons, the hospital team recommended not using our BiPAP until we can get the issue resolved. Please pray for wisdom and favor in resolving that issue so we can go home soon.

Great news -- if Chioma's labs look good in the morning, we'll be going home tomorrow!

Thank you all for praying! Great news: it has been very difficult the past few days working with the pulmonologist to get all the changes made we believe were needed, but today it was super quick and easy! Instead of trying harder and harder to persuade the doctor what we wanted (like I had been yesterday), we asked the Lord to do it for us, and we asked you all to pray. The doctor walked in a bit ago and recommended an excellent solution; we didn't even have to ask! Chioma's lungs have been expanding over the past month or so, and with proof of data now, the doctor recommended we increase the target volume from 350 ml to 400 ml since her lungs can handle this now to help her at least maintain if not get ahead on CO2 retention at night. We'll see how it goes overnight tonight. God fights better for us than we can for ourselves!

Good morning. Chioma made some good progress yesterday getting her CO2 levels back down into the 70's. The pulmonologist made some more changes to her BiPAP settings yesterday morning that are decent but not as ideal as we believe they should be. We will have a conversation with him again this morning to try improving them more. Please pray for favor and wisdom. 

There is no anticipated discharge date yet at this point. Her potassium levels are staying in range now with the help of a medication, which is good. Overall, progress is being made with CO2 levels too. Please also pray for God's wisdom, favor, and perfect timing to be clear regarding discharge from the hospital.

Good morning. Chioma made some good progress yesterday getting her CO2 levels back down into the 70's. The pulmonologist made some more changes to her BiPAP settings yesterday morning that are decent but not as ideal as we believe they should be. We will have a conversation with him again this morning to try improving them more. Please pray for favor and wisdom. 

There is no anticipated discharge date yet at this point. Her potassium levels are staying in range now with the help of a medication, which is good. Overall, progress is being made with CO2 levels too. Please also pray for God's wisdom, favor, and perfect timing to be clear regarding discharge from the hospital.

We are still at the hospital. Unfortunately, the low CO2 number we got excited about last night was bad data — I figured it out and let the team know so it could be removed from Chioma’s chart. Chioma’s CO2 this morning was actually almost as high as when we first came to the hospital, and her potassium was worse than ever. It was tempting to be afraid again. 

As we both continued to surrender our fears and concerns to the Lord, we’ve had God’s peace, and the day got better and better as we did. We worked thru many challenges with the team here, especially logistics for getting our home BiPAP settings updated based on experiments we ran on what was helping Chioma best. We also started working with a nephrologist to help better address the potassium and CO2 issues. 

We’re keenly aware of mistakes we have made in this exhausting fight, and it has been so good to keep in close communication with Jesus who is our Savior — past, present, and future. 

Chioma shared some beautiful thoughts on this today:

“I must say as I've had additional time to reflect, our God is awesome. If we are faithless, he remains faithful. He cannot deny himself (2 tim 2:13). I hope to explain more at another time. But this isn't simply a narrative of ‘we obey, and he comes through.’ This is ‘we can trust him even when we've not been trustworthy.’ That's just the kind of God he is. I'm drawn to humility and repentance because of this kind of Love. He's that way for us. I hope everyone knows it in the intimate details of your day-to-day lives.”

By mid-afternoon today, Chioma’s CO2 had come down 7 points to 81 — good progress. The team here wants her to reach at least the 60’s before discharge, as well as ideally have stable potassium levels. We’re hoping that could happen as soon as tomorrow or Wednesday.

The evening was the cherry on top of the day, so to speak — a dear friend whom we have led worship with at church in the past came to lead us in the hospital room, followed by another friend bringing some food. We don’t have time to mention all the beautiful acts of generosity we receive along the way, but please know we greatly appreciate them all. Thank you!!!

One especially notable part of today: it was fun that my mom brought Eliana to visit us today. It encouraged Chioma. :)

More amazing progress today as well: Chioma's CO2 levels came down a LOT more today while NOT on the BiPAP! She's been using the nasal cannula on only 1-2 L/min of oxygen (better than her baseline at home in fact) since around 11 am or so, and her CO2 came down from 81 to 66 on its own through the course of the day! Her normal baseline for CO2 is in the 50's to 60's, so we have a case to make for going home tomorrow. :)

The Lord is trustworthy! As we've obeyed Him, He is showing off again!

Chioma slept better last night, and I did too. Chioma slept probably 9-10 hours — the most sleep she’s had in days. It’s much quieter here than in the noisy ICU, which helps a lot. 

Overnight was not without challenge though. 

Chioma had eagerly wanted to go home yesterday or today and was considering leaving AMA (against medical advice) if necessary. She was eager to get to church to sing on the worship team today, which would have been the first time in exactly six months (to the day) since she led worship at church after Jesus rescued her from death during hospitalization in September. It’s no coincidence that the past few times we’ve tried to have Chioma return to singing on the worship team each have been thwarted by her being hospitalized (Satan doesn’t want her worshiping and testifying of God’s goodness, so we’re doing that here in the hospital anyway!). When we prayed about it, I believe the Lord was saying we should stay longer at the hospital, and Chioma agreed. The Lord had been encouraging her to let Him fight for her, and with our heart posture of surrender to His will instead of ours, that’s exactly what happened. I’m so glad we listened!

During the night, I awoke several times to nurses running various tests, and before I knew what they were doing, my whole body was trembling from fear because I just knew something wasn’t right. I heard the Holy Spirit remind me of Joshua 1:9 — “be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” I obeyed, and asked God to give me peace and courage to fight. My mind then became clear, I stopped trembling, and I started investigating. 

The first round of issues were minor — like getting the BiPAP mask to stay on properly to do its job. However, the second time I awoke to nurses in the room around 5 am, I was told Chioma’s potassium levels were critical again, higher than when we first came to the hospital (a common sign of intense cardiac challenge that can lead to severe heart problems like a heart attack). They treated the high potassium. However, I pointed out that while Chioma’s oxygen levels were perfect (100% SpO2), her CO2 levels were probably the underlying issue of the high heart rate and potassium. It occurred to me to check her BiPAP numbers, and I saw her breath rate was 18-20 breaths per minute, a great rate for a person who has full lung capacity when sleeping, but less than half of Chioma’s normal rate (30-40 breaths/min asleep to compensate for only currently having about 10-15% lung capacity). The staff didn’t understand the relevance until I explained. This was definitely causing Chioma’s CO2 to build up. Too much oxygen was keeping her breathing rate slow, and that was causing excess CO2 retention. To verify the issue, I tried waking Chioma. She was able to open her eyes but was not able to understand me or reply coherently; she has no memory of our conversation. The only times she has been nearly unresponsive like this before have been right before she’s been admitted to the ICU and put on a ventilator due to severely high CO2 levels. Our sense from the Lord has been to avoid an invasive ventilator since it is a major setback to recovery, so instead I persuaded the respiratory therapist to turn up her minimum breath rate on the BiPAP to 30 (close to her normal rate), and also to not test her CO2 levels yet since that might result in her being sent to the ICU again and put on an invasive ventilator by hospital protocol. It was very difficult to go back to sleep after this, but I chose to trust the Holy Spirit who was telling me to cast my cares at His feet. I did and slept very well, as did Chioma. 

Chioma woke up this morning around 8 am alert, though still trembling a bit from high CO2 levels (but far less than overnight when she could barely control her limbs). After a few more polishes to BiPAP settings, Chioma’s CO2 levels later in the morning were checked and had come down to 81 — still way too high, but so much better than whatever they were overnight!

This morning, our pulmonologist came in unexpectedly (he has never worked weekends when we’ve been here before!) and graciously got caught up. We all agreed after reviewing the data that Chioma’s home BiPAP settings have been too weak, allowing CO2 to build up over the course of 2 months and then landing us in the hospital (this is the third time now), but only now have we all realized the full picture. He is going to help us update the home BiPAP settings as needed on Monday based on what we now know works effectively for Chioma — praise God! We also discussed what the ICU doc yesterday helped us discern could have been a primary aggravating cause of the stiff lung condition resulting in this hospitalization — on Monday, Chioma accidentally ran out of oxygen while at PEMF rehab therapy (we’re not actually sure for how long, but likely for between 5-30 mins she had no oxygen left in her O2 tank), and that stress might have caused the increased lung stiffness resulting severe CO2 build up. Our oxygen supplier has irresponsibly been lying to patients that they can supply their oxygen tank needs and then only giving a small portion of what’s prescribed — in our case, they only give 5 of Chioma’s 15 tank prescription at a time, and every other patient I’ve talked to there is experiencing the same problem. Thus, we’ve had to ration oxygen tanks, sometimes running them down very close to empty just to make sure we have enough. It’s ultimately our fault we both forgot to check her oxygen tank levels on Monday, but the risky rationing is because of the supplier’s failures. We and other patients are fighting them on this. While that continues to play out, the pulmonologist also committed to trying to get a continuous flow portable oxygen concentrator for Chioma — a big victory!

Another victory yesterday was that we were able to get some naturopathic products (that we’d been prayerfully considering using for several months) from a local friend who distributes them. The product utilizes frankincense, and we’ve been experimenting with using an inexpensive form of frankincense to see if it would have any effect on surface tumors — remarkably it did a lot! During our experimentation over the past month or so, surface level parts of tumors shrank while the parts of them below the surface remained similar in size or unfortunately grew; other visible tumor areas we did not apply the frankincense to showed none of the positive changes we observed on the treated areas. We started using the oral and topical forms of the naturopathic products last night. The Lord helped connect us to this thru dear friends, and we’re very excited to add it to the arsenal especially given how the hospital is unable to offer cancer treatments while Chioma is here. 

Chioma has enjoyed several hours off the BiPAP today eating, talking, and singing praises to God. :)

The Lord has been fighting for us beyond what we ever could have done on our own!

Great news -- Chioma is being released from ICU status, so we'll be moving to a regular hospital room for monitoring! Praise Jesus!!

The picture of her is from last night when she got to eat dinner that a dear friend brought us.

Chioma is doing slightly better than last night breathing wise. She's requiring less oxygen, though her CO2 is still about as high as it was last night (better than when we arrived, but still too high). We had difficulty with the mask staying on overnight, and neither of us slept very well. However, she did greatly enjoy a walk around the room with the nurse this morning, a big omelette breakfast, and FaceTiming with Eliana and my mom. :) She's getting a nap now.

Chioma is doing slightly better than last night breathing wise. She's requiring less oxygen, though her CO2 is still about as high as it was last night (better than when we arrived, but still too high). We had difficulty with the mask staying on overnight, and neither of us slept very well. However, she did greatly enjoy a walk around the room with the nurse this morning, a big omelette breakfast, and FaceTiming with Eliana and my mom. :) She's getting a nap now.

Great news to share: First, the backstory — it was evident when the ICU doctor was here earlier (same man we've worked with the past three times here) that he thinks cancer has progressed too far for Chioma to breathe on her own anymore, but he was wise enough not to try very hard persuading us to give up like in previous times. While we can't see how God will get Chioma out of this, that is how He works often! Today, the biggest fight has been saying no to Satan's temptations to fear, doubt, and quit trusting God's leadership. We've done well; not perfectly, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, we have the faith to continue trusting Jesus. Praise God! We expect the victory we believe He has promised -- total restoration. 

Second, while the BiPAP didn't seem to help much this morning, the results of the blood gas test a bit ago show that Chioma's pH is now in normal range (most important value), and her CO2 has made great progress coming down from 97 to 77. Praise Jesus!!! We're celebrating.

Thank you for fighting with us!

We’re unfortunately at the hospital in the ICU again as of this morning. While Chioma has made amazing progress lately (a week ago even walking about 1/3 mile, which is the most she’s walked at once in about a year), the past several days she’s had more difficulty breathing, and last night she was showing signs of elevated CO2 levels and not sleeping well. Her CO2 was in the 90’s when we arrived early this morning, which is very high. She seems to be improving — praise Jesus. Please join us in praying for wisdom, against all the plans of Satan, and of course for complete healing.

We’re celebrating that the Lord is causing the tumors to shrink again!

Much of the past 4 weeks since Chioma was released from the hospital felt scary since the tumors were growing again after Chioma received the iron infusions in January. The cancer activity also felt painful for Chioma in her bones. The iron was needed to help save Chioma’s life, which was obviously a higher priority than continuing to cancer, so we’re grateful for how the iron has helped restore Chioma’s blood, energy, and strength. Yet, we also want to do what is wise in best mitigating tumor growth. We have been seeking God for wisdom daily on what to do.

The Lord gave us wisdom in navigating a handful of strategic treatment changes (I’ll spare you the details, but essentially we heavily increased dosages of many things and added an awesome new experimental therapy called chlorine dioxide that I’ll write about more in the future). Even with those changes, the tumors appeared to continue growing quickly, even rejecting the gallium cream by not absorbing it (that’s never happened before). It felt very frustrating and disappointing!

However, what happened next I believe was critical in the turn around. 

On the evening of January 25th, I spoke with a neighbor from across the street about our situation in the cancer battle. She shared that she is a believer and recounted three miracle stories of people she knew to encourage me, one being of her own daughter. The first two were stories of men she knew who had exhausted all cancer treatments options and decided to simply fully entrust their lives into God’s hands. Both are alive and well today when they were predicted to be dead many years ago! The third story was of the woman’s daughter who had crib death syndrome (where a child stops breathing while sleeping and dies). When the diagnosis was made at three months old, the mother told God she didn’t have the strength to stay awake constantly every time her baby slept to keep her alive anytime she stopped breathing, and that if God wanted her to live, He’d have to keep her alive Himself! She never once stayed up watching her daughter and left her life in God’s hands. Her daughter is now a healthy adult!

Even though I don’t think it was wise to leave her child unattended without direction from the Lord to do so because God commanded us to not test Him (Matthew 4:7), I was deeply inspired by our neighbor’s faith as God heard her prayer of faith for healing (James 5:15-16). It has often felt foolish, ridiculous, terrifying, and many other related things to trust God when things look so terrible in our lives. In some ways, it’s felt like how I imagine Abraham and Sarah felt while waiting on God’s promise of a child when they were many decades past childbearing years, and how Israel felt when fleeing Egypt at the Red Sea with no escape unless God parted the waters.

That night, I realized I needed to repent for an issue in my heart. Since last year when Chioma was first hospitalized, I’ve often felt disappointed in how God has not rescued us from this fight faster, as we’d hoped He would do. In subtle ways, I realized that I had started believing God is not actually FULLY trustworthy, so it was thus up to me to somehow figure out how to cure Chioma since God hadn’t. Now, obviously, we have a God-ordained responsibility to take care of our bodies, doing whatever He leads us to do. However, instead of seeking God for wisdom and guidance always, I have at times allowed myself to make the assumption of “practical atheists” — to assume there’s no God and act accordingly. The Bible frequently labels this as the path that “leads to death” (Proverbs 14:12).

I decided to repent. I told God that evening if He wants Chioma to stay alive, He’s going to have to do it! I will of course do everything He tells me to do in caring for her, but her recovery is completely in His hands (that’s always been the case anyways, but it makes a big difference in my heart to actually fully believe and acknowledge it). 

Literally, the next day during our wound care routine, I noticed one of the smaller tumors had a nearly 20% reduction in size!!! I also saw that most all the tumors seemed to have stopped growing!

At our wound care clinic visit the next day, the team confirmed that the primary large breast tumor was in fact smaller than it had been on January 12. 

It’s accurate to say that overnight the situation reversed. As of today, all the bone pain is gone, and all visible tumors appear to be shrinking again. Praise Jesus!

Chioma similarly had an epiphany in her thinking that resulted in great improvement over the past week as well. Through talking with a mentor and prayer, she realized that her thoughts regarding sickness could make a bigger difference in her recovery than she previously appreciated. At any given time, she has the choice to either stay comfortable within the current limitations she faces by avoiding challenge, or to gently push herself to challenge the limitations so that she can grow/recover. It can be easy to accept the identity of sickness (“I’m a sick person, and this is just how things are going to be”) versus the identity of a recovering person (“I’m recovering, and though things are uncomfortable, they will get better”). She told me she’s realizing the importance of choosing to consider sickness intolerably annoying rather than a comfortable identity with which she’s complacent. Making more seemingly small choices in that regard felt difficult to her with such low energy. However, within 24 hours of those choices, the same PEMF treatment she’d been doing for weeks resulted in a tangibly big increase in energy that she hadn’t experienced in recent weeks!

God is truly awesome and trustworthy! I’ve known, believed, and even taught for many years that it’s possible to do something in life, and depending on one’s heart, the outcomes will be entirely different. For example, someone can mow their beautiful lawn with a heart full of gratitude towards God for how He has blessed them with a lawn, and they’ll experience joy. Oppositely, someone else can mow their equally beautiful lawn and be focused on thoughts of anger and revenge against someone else, and they’ll be full of bitterness and anger. The quality of work done will likely be FAR better in the yard of the person who had joy than the person who had bitterness. The condition of our hearts influence outcomes! Though a limited analogy, quantum physics similarly demonstrates this — the intent of the observer changes observable outcomes in experiments. In our situation, it seems as if the treatments we’d been doing changed from failing to working perfectly overnight when my heart towards God changed. Coincidence? I think not. In all things, God has revealed that trusting Him is truly the path of life. Praise God!

One of the most exciting improvements we celebrated this past week was Chioma walking outside for nearly 1,000 feet for the first time in nearly 10 months completely unassisted by a walker or wheelchair. You can watch it here.

Thank you all for fighting with us! We’re so grateful for the many expressions of love and support, especially from our dear friend Nancy who has driven Chioma to and from many medical appointments faithfully for months, probably now many thousands of miles. We honor and bless her!

We’ve had some ups and downs the past few weeks. 

On the positive side, Chioma has regained a significant amount of strength since the hospitalization and finished shedding pretty much all of the 17 lbs of water weight they put into her body with IV fluids at the hospital. She even had enough strength last week to stand nearby at the playground while Eliana and I climbed and went down the slides. Eliana loved that, and Chioma loved it even more. :) Chioma’s breathing is also significantly better, which we suspect is primarily due to improved blood levels following iron infusions in January. The nausea is also nearly completely gone as well, almost certainly due to the presence of adequate iron levels. Praise God! We’ve continued receiving wonderful, nutritious meals from friends and family as well, which has been very helpful. And most importantly, we continue to be refreshed by the Lord through time spent with Him and through the loving encouragement of people!

On the negative side, the high doses of IV iron that were given before, during, and shortly after the hospitalization to help restore red blood cell counts seem to unfortunately be a primary culprit in causing the tumors to grow rapidly again — possibly the fastest we’ve ever seen. The added iron was critical to helping Chioma stay alive, so the risk was worth taking. It has still felt saddening and scary to see tumors growing so quickly though, and it makes us all the more angry at the devil. Yet, in all this, we are no less convinced that (1) it is God’s will to completely restore Chioma, and (2) He will continue leading us with His wisdom. We’re making adjustments to the treatments we’re doing to continue best supporting Chioma. We would appreciate your continued prayers for wisdom. Chioma asks for prayers specifically for help with surrender to and total trust in Jesus. Despite these challenges, we know God is still the perfect Shepherd, who isn't caught off guard by any of these things and will continue leading us.

We are so grateful for the loving support we are receiving. God bless you all!

If you would like to help us with meals, you can sign up here or contact us: https://www.mealtrain.com/trains/g6r26e

Great news today:

1. We’re going home!!! Praise Jesus! While waiting on discharge paperwork, Chioma just walked a victory lap with the help of PT & OT. :)

2. Yesterday God showed off in another awesome way: Chioma's hemoglobin dropped as low as 7.0 on Sunday, and it had been dropping for several days prior too. 7 or below is the point at which they recommend a blood transfusion, but we've been trying to avoid that for many reasons. In our times of prayer, we and others praying have sensed God saying she didn't need the transfusion, that God would provide. We decided to defer the decision to yesterday, which the ICU team agreed to. Yesterday morning, her hemoglobin had jumped to 8.0! That big of a jump usually takes 1-2 weeks!! 

Thank you for praying and fighting with us!

And even more progress: Chioma has moved on to the high flow nasal cannula! We’re just one step away from her being back to a regular cannula. She’s on pace to be released from the ICU to a regular hospital room tomorrow. Praise God!

Praise God, Chioma is off the ventilator today!! She switched over to the BiPAP smoothly and is doing great.

This is a picture from this morning of us with our wonderful night ICU nurse, who has been an amazing advocate for Chioma the past two nights. She's also a believer.

Both Chioma and I rested well last night. Chioma's chest X-ray this morning looked excellent. The inflammation and excess effusion are mostly gone now (compared to her normal baseline). They were able suction out quite a bit of mucus and what seemed like residual vomit last night, which is helpful. 

Chioma was off the sedative most of today and was fully alert. She did a breathing test this morning to see if she could handle being off the ventilator yet, and similar to last time, it was too difficult for her to breathe well enough on her own just yet. So just like before, they let her exercise breathing on her own for a while (2.5 hours this time, which is great!) until she was getting pretty tired. This helps her prepare for extubation, which will likely be tomorrow at the earliest they said. She got some decent amounts of rest the rest of the day.

We also are thrilled to have been given approval to use the gallium maltolate, which has been a huge help in killing off cancer for Chioma since we started it in the fall. Under the Right to Try Act, we can do this legally, but hospital policy can hold up administration of experimental meds sometimes. The cream is over-the-counter, so that's not been too difficult to get approval for. The oral version, however, was tougher due to needing to put it in the feeding tube while on the ventilator. Praise God we got approval and administered it this afternoon! It's not good for Chioma to pause gallium for more than two days, and she's been off it for two days now. Perfect timing getting it to her this afternoon. The hospital doesn't know anything about gallium because it's so new and only experimental still, so they want safety data to have on file to verify our claims. We're working on gathering that info now and connected them with the researcher we're working with too. So grateful they took my word up front and didn't hold things up any longer, even though the pharmacy doc who handles experimental medicine approvals is off for the weekend.

Lastly, we are celebrating that the tumors visible on Chioma's skin are significantly smaller than that last time we did wound care for them about 5 days ago. There's even lots more new skin forming where the large breast tumor has been dying off, and the non-healing wounds on the tumor that have been oozing much of the time since last Spring are now almost completely no longer oozing/bleeding at all. I estimate that the large breast tumor probably has shrunk 20-30% (of the volume visible to us outside the body; we won’t know how much has shrunk inside the body until the next PET scan) in the past month alone. So grateful!

Chioma’s doing well enough now that they’re allowing her to slowly wake up by weaning the sedative. Here is her best smile she could muster just now. 

Thank you, God!

What a day! Hahahahaha!!! Jesus!!!! 

Things yesterday started out with improvements, but in the afternoon Chioma went into a coma and was struggling to breathe greatly. Her CO2 levels went up to about 100, which is life threatening. She was rushed to the ICU. 

I believe the Lord has been saying to me often, "she will live and not die and declare the works of the Lord." I believe Him. I have His peace and confidence in His ability to sustain us through anything, though it’s a fight of the mind to live out what I believe and know to be true from experience.

The ICU team unfortunately wasn’t able to get Chioma’s CO2 levels lower using their more powerful BiPAP, so we intubated her. Intubation went smoothly, but the team was very concerned about whether the low volume of air moving could do anything to help Chioma do anything but maintain where she was at with CO2 being so high it was now undetectable. God kept helping me remember more and more of what was done last time that worked and share it with the team, who were hesitant at first but in the end cautiously receptive. I had taken pictures of the vent settings often during our stay here in November, and also kept remembering and sharing more and more of what we learned then. 

After about an hour of being on the vent, Chioma's CO2 levels went from being so high they were undetectable to now being almost in the perfect range!!! This is a miracle! No one anticipated that being possible so fast. And I can't recall her CO2 levels ever being so low anytime in the past 6 months, in fact!! There are still other major heart issues they're working to address, but what a huge victory!!! 

Praise God!!!!!!!

Chioma is sedated and resting well. They’re starting to wean down the ventilator strength slowly.

Thank you all who are fighting with us!

It’s been a very busy day so far with staff visits. We only got 4-5 hours of sleep last night, so we're both quite tired. We got to bed around 2 am after moving to a regular hospital room.

Overnight, the hospital administered IV fluids to help get Chioma's blood pressure high enough for her to safely take her heart medication today. She's had a very high heart rate (in the 140's) since yesterday afternoon, and the medication helped bring it down to around 125 BPM this afternoon. There's more wheezing in her lungs than yesterday, and a higher white blood cell count too. She's been battling a lot of anxiety (mental and physiological) this afternoon related to the difficulty breathing. We've been worshiping to help keep our minds on Jesus. An anti-anxiety med is helping her sleep now too.

The CT taken in the middle of the night shows lots of “white out” in both lungs, which the pulmonologist and hospitalist told us could be cancer, inflammation, and/or infection. It’s likely all of the above are represented, but there’s no way to tell the difference between them. Thankfully no blood clot was seen. They still think that aspirated vomit is a primary cause of the respiratory distress and are continuing antibiotics to treat for potential pneumonia.

Because Chioma is needing 5-6 L/min of oxygen still and not feeling well, they want to keep her here several more days until she is back to her baseline of 2 L/min of oxygen support.

We came to the hospital via ambulance, and Chioma was requiring 10 L/min of oxygen on our BiPAP (when she seemingly went into shock this afternoon, her oxygen saturation dropped into the 50-60% range, so we immediately got her on the 10 L/min BiPAP support at home). She remained conscious all afternoon, which is great. After initial testing, the ER doctor came in and talked with us. Both COVID and flu tests are negative. The X-ray shows a bit of increased pleural effusion, particularly on the right lung, as well as "patchy infiltrates" in both lungs; they can't tell whether those are cancer, pneumonia, or something else yet. Those aren't all new, but we’re not sure if any are new since they didn't compare it with the more recent x-rays. A CT scan is coming next to shed more light. They think the stomach acid Chioma breathed in when vomiting today is a likely cause of at least part of the issue, if not entirely. They're treating her with antibiotics for pneumonia proactively. She just got off the BiPAP about an hour ago and is breathing great on 5 L/min of O2! Chioma said she feels like the fever is gone now. Making quick recovery. Praise God!!! We’re going to stay overnight for monitoring.

Thank you all for joining us in prayer!

On our way to the hospital. Chioma's had a rough day breathing and possibly breathed in some vomit. Not sure what's going on, so they're gonna check things out at the ER. Please pray.

[Since I can only add one image to a post here on GiveSendGo, here’s a link to see the other photo we shared on other platforms with this post.]

It was challenging for me to find time to write an update amidst myself unfortunately getting sick again (sinus infection this time) followed by family in town for the holidays. I’m very glad to be well again, especially prior to family arriving too!

We are very grateful that Chioma has continued regaining strength lately and is breathing much better than several weeks ago — in fact, probably the best she’s breathed since March! We greatly enjoyed time with our family for the holidays, and some much needed rest as well.

The Lord provided wisdom recently thru a variety of sources to help us recognize two new significant issues that were making it more difficult for Chioma to breathe over the past month. 

First, the naturopathic IVs we’d been doing (that have been a very important piece of our strategy) formerly seemed to help Chioma clear out the excess fluid in her lungs (or at least not interfere with it), but lately the fluid from the IVs has appeared to be doing the opposite. Fluid from any IV whatsoever — both conventional and naturopathic — has been inducing/increasing shortness of breath and presumably accumulating as swelling in Chioma’s feet, legs, abdomen, and lungs. Unfortunately, no one knows precisely why that is happening yet, especially since her heart is functioning at essentially 100%. To help mitigate the issue, we have stopped all naturopathic IVs and half of the conventional ones over the past few weeks, which has effectively minimized the swelling and helped make it much easier for Chioma to breathe. Pausing naturopathic IVs (that have cost about $7-10k/mo lately) also covers the cost of the experimental non-toxic chemo we recently started using (which costs about $1k/mo), and frees funding for additional ways we’re exploring to help support Chioma’s body that can help compensate for what we’ve paused. We’re daily seeking God for wisdom in all these decisions. Please pray for us to hear God clearly.

Second, Chioma’s hemoglobin was getting dangerously low again. We learned recently that it plays a vital role in carrying oxygen and CO2 throughout the body, so it’s very important to maintain high enough levels without counteracting treatments too much. Yet, despite our best efforts to help support high enough hemoglobin levels, lately the levels have only continued to drop to near requiring a blood transfusion (which is best to avoid at nearly all costs when dealing with cancer). Through prayer and our own research, the Lord literally gave Chioma and I strategic wisdom out of the blue to realize how a handful of data points were all connected and bring that to the attention of our medical teams. With the input of the researcher we’re working with on using Gallium Maltolate (the non-toxic chemo that’s been immensely helpful with nearly zero side effects), we’ve modified Chioma’s diet to strategically increase iron intake in a way that minimally interferes with the Gallium Maltolate. She is greatly enjoying being able to eat much more red meat (great source of bioavailable iron) in the evenings. 

Both of these adjustments have made a BIG difference in helping Chioma’s breathing improve. We also added some other herbs and minerals to the mix that are well-documented in helping minimize respiratory swelling and mucus, which seem to be helpful too. The BiPAP is continuing to be very helpful in lowering elevated CO2 levels as shown in recent labs. We also recently purchased a grounding bed sheet that helps wick away excess electrical charge from the body caused by exposure to cell phone radiation, other electronic EMFs, static electricity, etc. We’d never appreciated how big of a deal that is in our modern society where people rarely ever make skin-to-ground contact that allows the body to get rid of excess electrical charge as most of our ancestors did often historically. When excess charge builds up in the body, over time it can cause many chronic health issues. Chioma has been struggling to sleep for most of this year. The first night we used the grounding sheet, she slept wonderfully over 12 hours and could hardly believe it! I did as well. Very grateful!

With the improved breathing and sleep, Chioma’s appetite has returned as well, resulting in her making progress in regaining some weight (she’s been 20-30 lbs underweight much of this year, and it’s been extremely difficult for her to put on weight while her body fights cancer). Many have commented over the past week that they’ve noticed her eyes are no longer sunken into her face, which is an observation Chioma has been happy to hear. :)

We are so very grateful for the support of so many helping us through this extremely challenging time — from meals, to financial support, to wisdom, to child care, to prayer, to encouragement, to fun surprises. May the Lord greatly bless you all!

The highest honor we give to Jesus, who is King over everything. He is ultimately causing Chioma’s body to become cancer-free and heal. 

We are learning so much along the way. What is the role of medicine or healthcare in healing? Does it interfere with faith? Does God even want Chioma well? What about So-And-So who died? These are a just a few of the questions that have arisen for us in this journey. We have been encouraged by experiencing that the Gospel has Good News for even trials like this. 

We are wrestling with and processing these issues daily, and we still have much to learn. However, the foundation of God’s love for us is one of the most important lessons of it all. Jesus said in John 15-16 that Christians will face difficulties in life, but we should be encouraged since He will be with us as we go through them together. While God has permitted Satan to temporarily remain on the earth until Jesus’ return (for purposes that ultimately bring about good by more people being able to hear the Good News and repent before Jesus’ return), it shouldn’t be a surprise that we currently daily are affronted by Satan who tempts us to sin, attacks us with sickness, etc. Jesus made it clear that all these nuisances are the work of Satan (not God, who He made clear is the source of all good things). Therefore, rather than just sit back and let Satan Chioma, we are resisting him with every tool God has provided to us — His own Holy Spirit living in us that gives us authority to resist the devil, medicine, rest, exercise, good nutrition, etc. We are fully aware that our bodies are temporary and wear out, but we are so very grateful for God’s help in sustaining them for as long as we are supposed to be alive on this planet bringing Him glory!

“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter and the glory of kings to search it out” (Proverbs 25:2).

“For all things were created by him, and all things exist through him and for him. To God be the glory forever! Amen” (Romans 11:36).

We've had a challenging past several days with Chioma experiencing increased difficulty breathing, persistent nausea (has been happening over the past few weeks), and lack of energy. We're grateful our oncologist prescribed a steroid yesterday that has been very helpful in reducing swelling and lung inflammation overnight. The difficulty breathing was becoming so bad last night though that the BiPAP was beginning to not be able to provide enough support. We rallied several prayer warrior friends around midnight to rally with us, and within 15 minutes of praying and commanding healing in Jesus' Name, Chioma was breathing much better and felt sleepy. She was able to get some sleep after that. This turn around enabled us to avoid going to the ER. This morning, she's doing significantly better overall. 

We're also very grateful to have received a PEMF wristband we'd ordered yesterday in the mail that overrides the brain's signaling for nausea/vomiting to prevent/stop it, which seems to be very helpful so far. Chioma had lost about 5 pounds in the past week seemingly primarily due to difficulty eating because of shortness of breath, nausea, and, vomiting (and she's already very underweight). Since last night when she started using the wristband, Chioma has be able to eat more food than she has in many days without nausea and vomiting. It's an amazing piece of technology created to prevent and treat nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy, motion sickness, anxiety, physician-diagnosed migraines, etc. We’re grateful to now have it.

We'd appreciate your continued prayers as well.

•  Many of Chioma’s bones in her ribs and spine look like Swiss cheese on imaging from the numerous holes cancer has eaten in them, and many of her chest ribs almost appear to be non-existent in some places (they are still there in reality, but are weakened). Chioma’s shoulders have also been heavily affected by cancer and injury, so they have limited range of motion. She’s limited in lifting anything heavy (including Eliana) and driving. We have received a lot of very generous help with driving Chioma to medical appointments on weekdays (so I can work as much as possible, when possible), and we continue to need it. We welcome your help! If you are with Chioma, please also lift heavy items for her, and do all you can to help her avoid falls.
• Many have been asking how else to best help right now, and currently meals are a big blessing. Cooking healthy, nutritious meals to help Chioma sustain and regain weight is a very important chore we often don’t have bandwidth to do well, and we welcome help with this. To sign up for providing a meal, please do so here on MealTrain.
• Our financial situation is nothing short of miraculous (like the half-million dollar debt that was just recently forgiven, which we mentioned in a recent update!!!). We make less than $2k/mo, have expenses exceeding $10-15k/mo (almost entirely cancer treatments costs), and amazingly have more than enough each month to pay our bills! We simply keep trusting the Lord, and He provides in so many ways, especially through the generosity of so many of you all! Thank you so, so very much all who are helping! If it’s on your heart to support us at any point, please do so here on GiveSendGo, or see the best alternative ways to give listed.

We are home!! Yesterday, the NIV (home-use BiPAP) was delivered to us in the hospital. We would have been able to go home, but the discharge process was held up by a mistake in the doctor order. After many hours repeatedly asking for help and waiting (delayed by numerous emergencies of other hospital patients), we prayed, we worshiped, we took authority over Satan, and we advocated. Through respectfully and creatively continuing to push for any ways things could get done that night, a physician connected to our pulmonologist just "happened to" walk by and overhear one of my conversations, and without my knowing, he graciously fixed the problem for us! Chioma walked out the front doors. We left around 10 pm, and got to sleep by around 1:30 am. We are so very grateful to be home and for Chioma having energy and strength again now that the excess CO2 is lower. Praise God! 

Praise Jesus -- we just received confirmation that the NIV (home BiPAP) was approved by insurance and should be delivered later today! Just waiting on the delivery process paperwork to be finalized and NIV to be delivered. Then we’ll be able to go home.

Chioma got the best sleep last night she's had in weeks. She was given a sleep aid pill, and she used the BiPAP for about 6 hours. She's getting better at using the BiPAP (which is very uncomfortable) more and more each night.

As of yesterday afternoon, we and the Banner hospital team have provided the DME company with everything needed for them to fulfill the doctor order for a home BiPAP (NIV machine) after they had requested more information. When I called in the late afternoon, they told us they were working on it right then. The hospitalist just now confirmed the DME company os closed over the weekend, so it looks like the order won't be fulfilled till Monday. We also learned this morning that the NIV machine prescribed costs about $50,000, so we aren't planning to try buying one of our own after market at this point. We'll keep praying for God's favor, and we are confident He's working in ways far beyond what we could ever do and will continue leading us with His wisdom when we ask. 

We're definitely not wasting our time here too. By the end of yesterday, through the course of multiple walks, a PT session, and moving around in the hospital room, Chioma walked probably over 500 ft! We've also had the opportunity to get LOTS of time with multiple excellent respiratory therapists and medical professionals who are helping us slowly take steps in weaning Chioma off of supplemental oxygen completely. Her blood work shows that she has WAY more than enough oxygen in her blood actually, so the issues breathing are pretty much only with getting excess CO2 out. Adding extra oxygen when she feels short of breath has actually been making the problem worse because it tells the lungs to slow down breathing when they actually need to be hyperventilating to get excess CO2 out. Through all the extra care we've gotten here this week, Chioma has also had extra opportunity to rest, pray, and process the current challenges. And with friends and family staying the night with her, I've been able to catch up on sleep at home and get work done remotely at the hospital as well. 

We're also reminding ourselves more than ever of God's promises and using Jesus' authority He gave all His disciples to keep resisting the devil's work to , steal, and destroy. It's easy to get discouraged by the limits of medicine that cannot bring full restoration, so it's all the more important to stay focused on receiving God's plans of full restoration by trusting Him. It's a life or death fight, and we're so glad the Lord is on our side!

Thank you for generously praying, encouraging, serving, and fighting with us!

We just heard from case management. They have told us that they are still waiting to hear back from the medical equipment company. So, they are not discharging us today. We prayed about it, and we feel that it is safest to not leave against medical advice today. We have seen God do many wonderful things, and we have every reason to trust him. Please continue to pray for efficient discharge process. Thank you!

Please join us in praying for the discharge process to be finished efficiently. They have been ready to send Chioma home most of today, but it's being held up only by the medical supply company providing a BiPAP for home use. It needs to be delivered the same day as discharge for Chioma to be discharged. We will only be able to make it to our oncologist's for Chioma's appointment tomorrow if she is discharged today, or else we'll have to reschedule that, and it is usually is challenging to get a meeting with our oncologist anytime soon since he's so busy. The Lord is working it out we're sure, but Satan is likely trying to interfere too. The Lord will bring good out of it all!

Please join us in praying for the discharge process to be finished efficiently. They have been ready to send Chioma home most of today, but it's being held up only by the medical supply company providing a BiPAP for home use. It needs to be delivered the same day as discharge for Chioma to be discharged. We will only be able to make it to our oncologist's for Chioma's appointment tomorrow if she is discharged today, or else we'll have to reschedule that, and it is usually is challenging to get a meeting with our oncologist anytime soon since he's so busy. The Lord is working it out we're sure, but Satan is likely trying to interfere too. The Lord will bring good out of it all!

Chioma shared this with our prayer group while I was taking a short nap several minutes ago:

"Y’all!!!!!!

Kyle doesn’t even know this because he is napping, getting some much-needed rest. But I just got off the phone with HonorHealth Billing Department. They have confirmed that the half a million dollars bill we owed from June’s hospitalization has been “adjusted” to ZERO. ZERO DOLLARS!!!! Instead of $500,000! It happened on 10-10-23. Whenever I see 10-10 I think of John 10:10 the thief comes to steal and destroy but Jesus came that we might have life and have it to the full. For some reason they didn’t send us a notification letter. But there’s a spiritual lesson in that too! What are the blessings Jesus has for us that we don’t know about? Ooh God is good!"

We had applied for financial assistance I believe in early October or so, hoping that it would lower the debt between our Christian cost-sharing coverage and our responsibility. The Lord provided exceeding more than we could ever ask or imagine! 

I have to say, we have used the analogy in sharing the Gospel of "if you were forgiven a million dollars, and didn't know it, how would you feel when you found out?" before hypothetically. Today just now, we used it in actuality!!! The nurse assistant we just shared the Gospel with not only heard the Gospel, but also earlier this afternoon as I was walking down the hallway, I spotted a tiny, sharp object glimmer in the light on the floor and heard the Holy Spirit tell me to pick it up. It was a very tiny earring. I waved down the only person I could see in the hallway about 100 feet away and handed it to her for lost and found, and it was that very nurse's earring she had lost in the morning! She thanked me profusely, and I told her that while it may sound crazy, God told me to pick it up and give it to her, and that I believe it is a reminder that He loves her. After we told her the Gospel just now, she then told me that she lost her second earring this afternoon after I'd found her first one too, and her nursing student found it on the floor just a bit ago too! She told us she knows Jesus and was so blessed by all these things. Look at God showing off again! 

We just shared the Gospel with our nurse now too. What a fun afternoon!

PLEASE READ this whole message as it has critical information about how we can ALL help Chioma watch out for warning signs to help prevent breathing issues from getting out of hand again while she is healing. Chioma will mostly be unable to recognize the symptoms on her own when they're happening due to how CO2 levels being high impairs brain function, so it will take community effort to help us watch out for these symptoms.

First, some great news: Chioma got about 7 hours of sleep overnight -- a big improvement! The first 3 hours she used the BiPAP, and the final 4 she went without it. After the first 3 hours on the BiPAP, her CO2 levels dropped enough that her symptoms of trembling and headache stopped completely, which is great. This morning, they granted our persistent request to retest her blood gas to help us better understand Chioma's current body dynamics (this was a miracle as we've been denied more times than I can count!). The results: After the 4 hours of sleep without the BiPAP, Chioma’s CO2 rose to 72.7 (normal range for a healthy person is 35-45) this morning with a pH of 7.315 (the blood pH range needed to survive is 7.35-7.45) — those are critical levels, but she was hardly showing any symptoms yet, meaning the warning signs we need to watch for are very subtle, far more subtle than anyone suspected. Her body's method of compensating to balance the low pH caused by high CO2 levels is by making bicarbonate, which was was 37. The kidneys are working great doing that, but the body cannot produce bicarbonate fast enough to keep up with the faster rate of CO2 reaccumulation caused by Chioma's impaired lungs (it takes 1-2 days to produce the amount of bicarbonate needed for high CO2 levels that can rise in a matter of just hours), and compensation is not a sustainable strategy either. While sleeping, the body naturally breathes slower. Chioma's normal way of keeping CO2 levels low enough with just 1 functioning lung capacity is to breathe faster, so slower breathing while sleeping causes a major problem -- CO2 builds up quickly, and the body can't keep up with it via compensating fast enough. Chioma is back on the BiPAP now, and they'll retest her blood CO2 again probably later this morning to see how fast she responds. 

The warning signs we ALL need to help Chioma watch for because she will often be unable to recognize them when it's happening:

(1) Trembling, followed by (2) headache, followed by (3) drowsiness, followed by (4) inability to think clearly, followed by (5) falling asleep mid-sentence, followed by (6) passing out. After passing out, death is imminent without immediate intervention (which is why it's a miracle she's survived passing out from CO2 narcosis twice now, which has happened each time she's been hospitalized). Sometimes the order of the symptoms progression will vary. If you see any, please act fast to notify me immediately so we can figure out the fastest way to get her on the BiPAP. If she's at step 5 or above, call 911 immediately.

The headache this morning was the second sign after the increased trembling yesterday. Up until now, we never could figure out what was causing the headaches. Once she starts having headaches after minor trembling, that is the point at which she needs to use the BiPAP to stop symptoms from worsening. 

All in all, it is a great blessing to have this information and plan now!! 

And we are also continuing to look forward to the day she no longer needs it because she's fully healed!

Chioma had another good day of recovery. She is stable and should be able to go home tomorrow! 

Sleep has continued to be a major challenge. Chioma only got about 2.5-3 hours of sleep last night, and 1 hour the night before. She’s tired. Short naps during the day didn’t add much more on top of that either. Please continue to pray for good sleep.

Another answered prayer today: We had favor with our pulmonologist by him agreeing to try ordering a home BiPAP so we can have a tool to help prevent what brought us to the hospital (i.e. CO2 building up too high in Chioma’s body). We’d been trying for many weeks to get this ordered before, and this is the first time our request has been taken seriously! We’re very glad for that. Please pray for continued favor with that.

Another answered prayer: Chioma’s voice has returned! She had been very hoarse with lots of pain after the ventilator tube in her throat was removed, and today it’s much less painful and easier for her to talk.

By Chioma’s request: please also pray for the Lord’s continued help for her in receiving His peace by keeping her eyes on Jesus amidst all the temptations to fear and be discouraged — help continuing walking by faith and not by sight. She's doing really great at this overall, but sometimes it can feel overwhelming. Thank you all for helping hold us up when we are weary!

“Is someone among you ill? He should call for the elders of the congregation. They will pray for him and rub olive oil on him in the name of the Lord. The prayer offered with trust will heal the one who is ill — the Lord will restore his health; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.” (James 5‬:‭14‬-‭15‬‬‬)

Chioma and I both independently had this on our hearts this morning, and it is exactly what has been going on. So thankful for the Lord and all who are praying!

There have been many more answered prayers today.

One of the first was that on short notice, we asked for prayer from family members this morning because Chioma's temperature was 99.9 degrees F, signaling a possible fever. Shortly after family prayed, it come down to 99.1 degrees F, and it has been fine the rest of today. Many prayed for all the tubes to come off Chioma soon, and not only is she on a regular diet now, the feeding tube and most all the other IV’s have been removed! She has also been downgraded to a regular nasal cannula as well to reduce risk of aspirating food while eating (which unfortunately happened a bit while eating soup last night with the high flow cannula). Her heart rate became high though -- around 140. We asked for prayer and prayed. The Lord gave wisdom to Chioma that no one else had considered (or at least done anything about yet) to understand why it was high. Some medication we suggested helped lower it. We also have been struggling for many weeks to get a referral to a pulmonologist who we can follow up with more regularly than the limited availability of our current pulmonologist of once every three months. We asked for prayer for that today too, and within about 30 minutes or less, the exact pulmonologist we’ve been trying to get in with walked into the room! He agreed to take on Chioma as a patient. So many victories today! More than I have time to write. Both big and small things. Jesus is Lord over them all!

Chioma is no longer ICU status as of this afternoon!! We just were transferred into a non-ICU room. Join us in praying for good sleep as she barely slept more than an hour last night.

Chioma is using the high-flow cannula now eating a clear liquids diet. :) They're wanting her to stay on it till 10-11 pm or so if she does ok, and then use the bipap overnight.

Praise God! Chioma is off the ventilator! Not without a challenge though. 

This morning, Chioma again did not pass the spontaneous breathing test. It was even suggested that she could need to stay on the vent for weeks and possibly be given a tracheotomy — a surgical insertion of a breathing pathway in her throat to provide essentially a mobile ventilator allowing her to go home sooner. However, after prayer, discussion, and advocacy (especially by our amazing nurse who is not afraid to argue with the doctor!), the case was made by us that Chioma’s lungs weren’t being measured correctly for the baseline standard of how much air they should be able to breath because her lungs have been restricted about as much as they currently are since this summer. In fact, the CT scan of her lungs taken when we arrived in the ER was a lot better than the most recent one in September! The main markers that should be the measure for success are the blood CO2 and pH (pH shows how well Chioma’s body is compensating for high CO2). The blood CO2 has been slowly building up for some time, and we’d already been exploring options to address it prior to hospitalization The doctor and respiratory therapist today (new guy today who had different ideas than the great one yesterday) reconvened, allowed Chioma to retest and exercise her lungs for a few hours, and then agreed that she could come off the vent today! 

Chioma is now enjoying being able to close her mouth and swallow again. She will be using the bipap for a total of 4 hours before they test to see whether she can graduate from that to either a high-flow cannula or regular cannula too. 

We had a wonderful, refreshing time of prayer with our pastors and the team that did the healing conference at our church this weekend just now. 

Right before they arrived at the room, the respiratory therapist came by and explained that he has formulated a new plan for extubation (removing the ventilator tube) for tomorrow morning that will be less concerned with how much air Chioma is able to breathe (which has been diminished for many months; not a new problem) and focus on how well her blood pH is able to compensate for whatever levels of CO2 are present during the breathing test. This is the metric of success that was used the last time Chioma was in the ICU and more relevant to her breathing capacity that's been about only 1 lung volume total for a while. The next step would probably be to start using the bipap from there. 

Thank you, Jesus, for the progress today!

Ok, so the test is complete. Overall progress, but it's not considered safe to remove the vent yet. Chioma's peak pressure got down in the low 20's, which is great. However, with essentially only one working lung capacity total between both lungs (as the left is so damaged and the right is mildly damaged still), the tidal volume (amount of air breathed in and out) needed to be off the vent should ideally exceed 400-500 mL, and she's averaging around 285 mL, occasionally getting up into the low 300's on her own. She had been in the low 300's consistently with the vent on. The respiratory therapist is having her continue to exercise her lungs for another hour or two, and then he'll increase her support again to help her sleep more so her lungs continue resting and recovering. He said it may take a couple days to wean off the vent at this point and doesn't want to remove it too soon only to have to put it back in later. We both wholeheartedly agreed. 

I'm also going to ask the doctor about whether core cancer treatments can continue while Chioma's here too, if needed. Please pray for wisdom and favor in what will best support her recovery process. As we're at a different hospital than last time that has MUCH better patient policies, I think there is a better chance of approval. They already approved the experimental, ultra-low-toxicity chemo cream we've been using that has made enormous progress in shrinking visible skin lesions over the past 40 or so days -- it utilizes gallium maltolate, a compound that prevents cancer cells from making new DNA (and thus causing them to die off) by sitting in place of iron, without affecting almost any non-cancer cells and adding almost zero toxicity to the body. Through our early A/B test, it has proved to be one of the most powerful anti-cancer treatment we've ever done as the spots we applied cream to shrunk rapidly (one large-marble-sized lesion shrunk over 80% in the first four days, the fastest shrinking of all spots), and other spots without the cream on them grew. The compound is currently being studied in phase 1 clinical trials, and the cream is actually an over-the-counter substance. We'll see what else the team approves of the immunotherapies and hormone therapy our oncologist has scheduled for next Thursday, if we're even still here then (would love to be home by then!).

Great news: Chioma's lungs have continued to regain elasticity (expanding and contracting better) overnight, and her blood gas CO2 came down further to 52 on the same settings. The peak pressure lowered to around 25 cmH2O as well, also great. The team is now moving forward with the final breathing test to ensure Chioma can breathe on her own before removing the ventilator -- the spontaneous breathing test. Most patients are transitioned to a bipap as the next step after a ventilator is removed, and sometimes they can jump all the way to a high flow cannula. The respiratory therapist is beginning the spontaneous breathing test now, which will last about 20 minutes. Next steps will be determined at that point. Praising God!

Great news: Chioma's lungs have continued to regain elasticity (expanding and contracting better) overnight, and her blood gas CO2 came down further to 52 on the same settings. The peak pressure lowered to around 25 cmH2O as well, also great. The team is now moving forward with the final breathing test to ensure Chioma can breathe on her own before removing the ventilator -- the spontaneous breathing test. Most patients are transitioned to a bipap as the next step after a ventilator is removed, and sometimes they can jump all the way to a high flow cannula. The respiratory therapist is beginning the spontaneous breathing test now, which will last about 20 minutes. Next steps will be determined at that point. Praising God!

The team confirmed they are going to try to get Chioma off the ventilator tomorrow because she is continuing to improve. Praise God!

After the vent weening trial today, Chioma's blood CO2 is up higher at 57 (formerly 47; normal range is 45-55 for healthy adults), but her blood pH remained in the the normal range despite that, meaning her body has learned to compensate for high CO2 and is likely back to what it's used to. Her peak pressure is also the best it's been since we began -- down as low as 31 cmH20 and averaging about 33 (above 40 was risking rupturing the lungs, and she started off upwards of 55 yesterday). 

Chioma is less medically sedated now and communicating via writing. So grateful for the improvements!

More great news: the ICU doctor today (new doc that I like MUCH better than yesterday's) just let me know Chioma is doing well enough breathing that they're going to start progressively trying to wean her off the ventilator!  

She is also less sedated now and definitely able to understand us. She "smiled" in this picture for us, and the second photo (https://share.icloud.com/photos/07c7c1wo5QBOqr9cJ7cJWpyMA) is Mom showing her pictures of Eliana from today. :) She is now also talking with the nurse through writing out her questions.

Chioma’s peak pressure is now averaging in the upper 30's. Good progress! They've started lessening the sedation so she starts waking up a bit more slowly. I’ve had a few chances to talk to her, and it seems like she was understanding me.

Her blood CO2 level now is 47. Also good news! They're going to lighten up the pressure of the vent more and then check again on the CO2 in about an hour to see how she does.

Some good news from the respiratory therapist this morning: the peak pressure they were having to use to inflate Chioma's lungs with the ventilator was 55 cm H2O, which is very high and over time can eventually rupture lungs. It's was deemed necessary for the purpose of getting CO2 out fast enough. Since intubated yesterday, the peak pressure has come down to averaging between 40-45. Below 40 is the safe zone, so that's good progress. Not sure of Chioma's blood CO2 levels this morning yet, but the test has been ordered. As soon as Chioma's CO2 levels are in the safe zone and Chioma is able to breathe on her own during a safety test, the ventilator can be removed and either she breathe on her own or with the help of a bipap I presume going forward.

I slept pretty decently, for at least 8 hours. Very grateful. I’ve been casting my cares at Jesus’s feet, and enjoying His peace in the midst of this storm. He is fighting this battle in ways beyond anything I or anyone else could ever do.

Chioma’s been intubated with the ventilator and feeding tube (been getting a slow, constant flow of vegan protein shake) since yesterday around noon. Because she woke up about an hour after being intubated once her CO2 was low enough for her to regain consciousness, they intentionally have continually sedated her to keep her from inadvertently pulling tubes out, which is the normal response of patients with terribly uncomfortable tubes in their throats. It's helping her rest too, which is good. Her vitals have stabilized as well. Praise God!


Please pause to fast and pray however the Lord leads you. Chioma is in critical condition. God can turn it around though. 

Her CO2 is now down to 60, so great progress has been made there. Chioma's pH is normalized completely now, also great. However, the ICU doc, said there is almost no excess fluid to drain and believes the reason the lungs aren't working is because of cancer having frozen the lungs so much that they aren't expanding and contracting properly on their own, hence the reliance on the ventilator to breathe. Just like the ICU doc in September, he doesn't believe there's any chance of survival. Her blood pressure is very low and heart rate very high.

God gets to show off again.

We’re on our way to the hospital in an ambulance since we could no longer support her breathing at home.

Please pray. Chioma is struggling greatly tonight. High blood pressure and low oxygen. Please pray for healing and wisdom.

On Sunday, we rested much of the day. By the end of the day, Chioma’s breathing was continuing to improve a bit, but her blood pressure was very high, she was still fairly weak, and her mental state seemed to be perpetually very tired and unfocused — very similar to how it had been at one point in the ICU when her blood CO2 levels were dangerously high. We considered trying to find additional medical support besides going to the ER, but there were no options. We also sensed the Lord saying to stay home and rest, and that she would be doing significantly better in the morning if we did. So we rested. 

Overnight, Chioma got some great sleep, and this morning her heart rate returned to her pre-infection normal range in the 110's, we decreased her supplemental O2 from 4 L/min to 3 L/min with her maintaining 100% saturation at 3 L/min, she was trembling much less when exerting herself, and she had more strength than yesterday. 

Chioma's chest X-ray later in the morning shows the remnants of what was likely a respiratory infection and possibly an increase of pleural effusion with the left lung as a result of an infection. Her lungs are considered stable again now according to the X-ray reading. Chioma's breathing has continued improving today to the point that she's now on only 2 L/min of supplemental oxygen and maintaining blood oxygen saturation at 98% (anything 97% or greater is excellent). That means she's back to oxygen dependency at the level she was prior to the infection (2 L/min). She's also been hungry, eating, and getting more sleep this afternoon. She’s also able to walk around the house unassisted with near the amount of strength she had prior to the infection. So much progress today! We celebrated on the way home from the X-ray by getting her a burger since she was hungry for one (a great sign of healing), a smoothie, and stopping to enjoy some fresh air in the beautiful 70 degree weather with our car windows down.

We’re thanking Jesus! Thank you for praying as well!

The past several days have been very challenging. Chioma unfortunately caught a respiratory infection that is rattler brutal because of her fragile state. Despite strong antibiotics, immune boosting naturopathic therapies, and supplements, her condition continued worsening especially later in the week (increased shortness of breath, wheezing, coughing, sleeplessness, and minor nasal congestion) culminating last night in a rough night that was scary — reminiscent of when we went to the ER in September. Her O2 levels kept dropping, we kept increasing supplemental O2, and neither of us slept much.

We believe the Lord told us not to go to the ER this time though, so we took the step of faith and stayed home. Our pastors came over this morning and commanded life into Chioma's body like they did in the hospital when Chioma miraculously woke up from the coma last month. It was another turn around moment. We had maxed out the supplemental oxygen for Chioma on the home concentrator this morning, and she was still in a lot of distress from low oxygen levels: 90% blood saturation at rest (dangerously low). Our pastors prayed and prophesied that her O2 would hit 100% again today. After our time of prayer, we carried Chioma to the restroom (since she didn’t have strength to stand or walk), and she had a big bowel movement. Her breathing has continued improving ever since. Her oxygen levels have even hit 100% at least once and have maintained a steady 97-98% at rest most of the afternoon and evening. We even started slowly turning down her oxygen support levels back towards normal (from 5.5 L/min down to 4.5 L/min; for reference, the normal level prior to infection was 2 L/min), and she has maintained great oxygen saturation at 97-98%. Praise God!!! 

It's wonderful that Chioma has been getting some good sleep this afternoon and evening after a week of sleep deprivation. We had family and friends with us helping all day, which was an immense blessing. 

Please be praying against the infection, for renewed strength, and especially good sleep for us both. 

Thank you for fighting with us!

Yesterday marked 4 weeks from when Chioma was predicted by doctors to be dead at the latest. Not only is she still alive, we have been celebrating more recovery progress! 

Early in the morning of October 9, we took Chioma in for a chest x-ray. At our cardiothoracic surgery follow up appointment afterwards, the results were presented: not only are both lungs stable in terms of fluid accumulation (they’re not continuing to fill with any significant amount of fluid), the left lung is actually slightly improved (to the surprise of the surgery team since they didn’t expect that to happen)! The right lung is also slightly improved from when we left the hospital and is remaining about 90-95% open overall. The lower half of the left lung still appears trapped shut due to cancer involvement, but at least the upper half has opened so far and is functioning to some degree now that the pneumonia has resolved and the excess fluid is gone (it’s my understanding that the fluid still around the bottom half of the left lung is considered a good thing right now by the surgery team as it eliminates the vacuum where the lung is still collapsed; we believe Jesus will continue causing the lung to open all the way). Here are a series of X-ray pictures I cropped and annotated to show you highlights of the progression from pre-hospitalization through October 5: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/f07xna9lrcqt64tnhczai2/h?rlkey=wvy8rx469r3gj5xsfpuy1r155&dl=0

Since returning from the mountains earlier this month (see previous post about how that helped Chioma’s blood), we’ve resumed appointments for Chioma with 4 rather full days per week. Up until last week, I have accompanied Chioma to most of her appointments since we have been meeting with our team to make adjustments to the treatment plan given the recent setbacks. We’re very grateful for another of Chioma’s friends who flew in to town to help us for several days last week, and especially for a dear friend from church who has been driving Chioma most days more recently as she had been doing prior to the hospitalization as well. We’re also especially for our family who have been helping watch Eliana so much of this time. As Chioma is not able to drive, lift much weight (including Eliana, other than while seated), or walk much distance unassisted, I can’t even begin to explain how immensely helpful it has been to know Eliana is being cared for and to have trustworthy help transporting Chioma. I’ve even been able to resume working closer to half-time hours starting last week. We will continue to need significant help caring for Eliana and driving Chioma in the coming months. If you’d like to help with either, please let us know.

Some additional progress we are celebrating is the cancer-related bone pain that had returned after the recent hospitalization is mostly gone again after resuming PEMF and other naturopathic therapies, Chioma’s strength is continuing to increase bit-by-bit daily, and we even have started to notice the first signs of cancer die off on the largest areas where cancer has grown through the skin (that was an exciting thing to see over the weekend!). We recently added in an experimental anti-cancer cream that contains a substance currently being studied in phase 1 clinical trials and notably has almost zero potential side effects (more exciting frontiers are being explored!), and we believe it has been a major part of the significant improvements on the skin. 

Spiritually, it’s a daily battle to continue rejecting tempting thoughts of fear, doubt, and despair from Satan that show up often in so many subtle and overt ways. We’re continuing to grow in trust as the Holy Spirit guides us through this “valley of the shadow of death”, and we greatly appreciate the prayers and encouragement from so many of you all.

We continue to openly acknowledge Jesus as being the cause of Chioma’s healing, and we also wholeheartedly thank and bless the medical teams for how they have played such an important role in helping save Chioma’s life by supporting her body so well. Just today, during an ultrasound appointment today at which they confirmed a previous blood clot (possibly two) has resolved, the technician was moved by our testimony and Jesus’ Gospel of the Kingdom we shared. She said she keeps getting closer to finding God, and agreed that today was possibly a divine appointment. I’m consistently amazed at how God gives hope and life from His Word to people when we will just (imperfectly) share it!

PRAYER NEEDS:

• Please continue praying for Chioma’s complete healing. Focus especially on her lungs as it is still quite difficult to breathe overall, and she has been coughing more lately, keeping us both up more during the night.
• Please pray especially for Chioma’s sleep to be restful, restorative, and full. It has been difficult for her to get enough sleep lately. 
• Please pray for continued provision for us financially, with driving, with childcare, etc. 

Thank you for fighting with us!

In the past week, Chioma has continued regaining strength bit-by-bit. Last weekend, we made a trip up to the cool mountain air of Flagstaff at a family member’s cabin to again stimulate Chioma’s blood recovery. Her hemoglobin had gotten down to a dangerous 7.4 in the hospital (12 is the minimum for healthy blood, and below 8 typically requires a blood transfusion). On September 25 (4 days after being released from the hospital), it was 8. After the mountains trip, on October 5, it had jumped up to 9.5! That is by far the fastest we’ve ever seen it rebound. 

The trip was a great refreshing time after the heartache, stress, and trauma of the weeks prior — a Psalm 23 moment. Chioma’s mom and a wonderful friend came along to help with caring for Eliana and Chioma. Chioma was challenged in breathing as expected, and she persevered in amazing ways. The cabin was somewhere around 7,200 ft elevation (my best guess), and we even made a trek up to the ski slopes nearby at about 9,300 ft elevation one afternoon where Chioma walked about 100 ft with assistance! All in all, by the time we returned to Phoenix, her breathing was noticeably stronger and her heart rate has lowered too. There’s still a significant way to go to return to normal function for her lungs, heart, and blood, but this all is great progress. The Scripture comes to mind: “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the LORD rejoices to see the work begin” (Zechariah 4:10a). 

We’ve continued to be in awe of how God rescued Chioma from the edge of death several weeks ago, and we also keep discovering more and more of just how many people prayed, as well as details of what transpired to help Chioma. 24/7 prayer coverage organized by family and friends even happened during the worst of our time in the ICU. We’re also amazed at how God was speaking to various friends about what was going on and how to pray in details so specific it’s astounding. Just last night, we learned that a dear friend of ours who prayed even heard from God specific details about the spiritual attack Chioma was undergoing including the specific lies they were saying, which helped this friend pray against it all with precision. Unlike drug-induced hallucinations that Chioma has experienced when on pain killers after surgeries in the past, Chioma was NOT on any hallucinogenic pain meds, was clear-minded, and could often see and hear “people” in the ICU room that no one else could see or hear — some were probably angels, but many of them were not as they were taunting her, trying to convince her to abandon her family and give up her life. At one point on Thursday evening in the ICU, Chioma kept relaying pieces of what she was seeing happen that I couldn’t see or hear — she watched a vision unfold of our oncologist and a handful of people in the room talking, which I later realized was a preview of what ACTUALLY happened in that ICU room the very next morning (the “showdown” conversation where they told everyone Chioma was going to die, and we told them we weren’t giving up on trusting God for a miracle). When the bipap life support came off of Chioma’s mouth a few days later, Chioma explained to me in even greater detail the things she’d seen as well. It is astounding to me how God had shown her glimpses of events the day before they happened, as if to prepare her for it. Chioma at one point even saw a door in the wall and a bright light when she closed her eyes. When all this was happening, at first I thought I should report to the nurse that Chioma was experiencing hallucinations, but the Holy Spirit firmly told me not to do that; what she was seeing was real. I wholeheartedly believe it was. I am so grateful for our brave friends who were aware of the unseen battles going on around us and were fighting in the spirit! Our prayers of course make a difference in the world we can see, but I’m reminded of just how important they are in the battle constantly around us that we cannot usually see!

Another thing we’ve been pondering the past few months that has been helpful in coming to terms with the traumatic year we’ve been through has been asking the question of God, “How’d we get here?” 

We don’t have all the answers our souls have wanted, but we do know God’s Word is clear that He is the God who takes what Satan intends for evil and turns it for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28). Though we lost our home early in the year to flooding that caused mold damage, much of my work, lots of money, and more, we are increasingly confident that God’s promise to provide for us is as true as it’s ever been (Matthew 6), and that He will bring good out of the disaster if we trust Him to do so. If I think selfishly as a mere man, I can easily become depressed by our losses. However, when I think with the mindset of Messiah Jesus, I am so very happy at how God has refined our hearts, met our needs, healed, rescued, given wisdom, and spread His love through us to others. His Kingdom of love, joy, and peace is advancing, and “the gates of will not remain standing” (Matthew 16:18). If you don’t already know Jesus as your friend and Lord, there’s no better day than today to give Him your whole heart. His free offer of forgiveness for all we’ve ever done wrong (because we can never do enough right to make up for it according to God) is already extended to you. Just say yes, and make Him your King. Fall in love with Him. Make Him your best friend. Obey everything He says because you trust Him, that you trust it is the absolute best plan for your life (not by human standards, but by His that we were created to live and enjoy). No matter the circumstances — good or bad — you can have the unshakable love, joy, and peace that we so greatly appreciate and enjoy. We know where we are going when we die (to be with Jesus for eternity because we have entrusted our lives to Jesus), and we know we have His favor here on this sin-infested, tumultuous earth too. Jesus’ name Emmanuel means “God is with us”, and He wants to be with you just as much as anyone else, no matter how much bad you’ve done. He paid the price for all our sins with His own death and resurrection, and He freely invites all to receive His friendship. If nothing more positive were to come out of our suffering this year than that just one more person comes to know Jesus as their friend and Lord, it will have been an amazing success. Because God “is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us” (Ephesians 3:20), we know that He will of course bring far more good out of all this than we can possibly imagine. 

Thank you all who are praying, supporting, and encouraging us! We are so very grateful for all of you!

(…Continued from previous post)

Never have I more valued hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit than now, and never have I more valued knowing the Word of God. So often, the temptation to fear death and decay has seemed more than reasonable to entertain given how things looked in front of us. David said it beautifully: “I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living” (Psalm 27:13). We have heard the Lord whisper in our hearts so many times plans He has for us — having multiple children, serving others in various ministry capacities, building our business, and so much more. And, we also know the will of Jesus recorded in Scripture is to give us an “abundant life”, whereas the will of Satan is to “, steal, and destroy” (John 10:10). Jesus constantly called sickness the work of Satan (not of God), and He commissioned first the twelve disciples, then the seventy, and then all the rest to go preach the Good News, heal the sick, and cast out demons. I realize there is much confusion and debate around this subject, and I don’t mean to offend anyone in saying this, but Chioma and I several years ago decided to throw out our interpretations of experiences that had determined our theology and put our confidence solely in what the Word of God actually says about God’s will for healing. It’s so easy to blame God for unanswered prayers, whereas it’s much harder to realize that part of Him answering prayers is determined by what we believe and how we fight. That doesn’t take away the mystery of victories and losses that sometimes may simply be beyond what we’ll ever comprehend (like God’s answer to Job). But in the mess of this world damaged and polluted by sin, we have a God on our side who is much more of a warrior than sometimes we want to understand Him to be. In short, we believe God wants His kids to fight sickness, and that warrior mentality has been so helpful. Of course, ultimately, the main battle is for the Kingdom of God — to rescue as many people out of Satan’s ownership and into Jesus’s Family as possible. Whether we live or die in our physical bodies right now is always of secondary importance to that, but it also doesn’t diminish the value God places on healing as a sign of His love to sustain us for the days He has planned for us either. Access to healing is one of the benefits of salvation. 

Yet, even with knowing this truth, it did not mean we were perfect in execution. We are so very weak and completely incapable of doing God’s will in our own strength. We need His supernatural power to do what He asks (John 15) just as much as anyone! The Friday in the ICU when all the doctors told us there was no way Chioma could ever recover beyond being on life support, I did waver in my faith multiple times and break down in tears. Chioma at one point that night even wrote in her journal to communicate to us that she had decided to give up — to which my sister-in-law Julianna bravely and courageously objected by encouraging Chioma to keep fighting. Chioma later told me that while she didn’t want to die, she simply felt so tired she wanted to give up. We are eternally grateful and honor Julianna for helping Chioma change her mind in that moment of weakness!!! While Chioma and I both struggled to battle thoughts of doubt from Satan, with the help of those around us and God Himself, we each ultimately decided to keep exchanging our thoughts of doubt, fear, and disbelief instead for faith/ trust in God. We can confidently say that we did NOT have the strength to win the fight for Chioma’s life. Only God did, and He gave it to us both directly and through so many of you. “If we are faithless, He remains faithful” (2 Timothy 2:13).

Through the course of this week, we have had many doctor and treatment appointments. We’ve been on the road most of the week. Chioma’s breathing is improving daily, the 5+ lbs of swelling fluid on various parts of her body has been mostly shed now, and she is regaining strength. She’s actually walking even stronger and better than prior to the hospitalization in several ways! We’re continuing to tell many people about Jesus too. 

Please continue praying for wisdom, healing, and provision. Thank you all who are fighting with us! We greatly love and appreciate you more than we can express in words. 

The hospitalist today is a believer and such an awesome doctor. He acknowledged God saved Chioma because no one else could. He is discharging Chioma now and doing it quickly so we can make it to our 2 pm cancer treatment appointment today at the naturopath that I was waiting to know whether I should cancel or not. Praise Jesus!!!

God loves showing off. Chioma was supposed to be dead by Monday according to all the hospital ICU team, and today she’s not only alive but continuing to improve and surprising more and more hospital staff who remember her condition last week!

This morning, Chioma walked a lap around the section of the hospital she’s in without a walker, just holding my hand. As she was getting started, the ICU nurse we had so much frustration with that didn't want to give Chioma nutrition saw us. Her jaw dropped and she stood still, speechless. She could hardly believe what she saw. Chioma was expected to be dead by Monday at the latest, and here she was now walking and talking. Chioma greeted her, and we blessed and thanked her. I assured her that Jesus who healed Chioma loves her just as much as Chioma. She didn't want to hear any more about Jesus, but she could not deny what she was seeing. It was a beautiful, joy-filled moment. 

We also spent about 20 minutes talking with a nurse today earlier who had attended to Chioma on her way to the ICU while she was unconscious. He is also totally amazed. He was telling us about how he's going to propose to his fiancé soon, and we talked about marriage, which then was a perfect opportunity to talk about the only thing that can sustain and cause a marriage to thrive long-term instead of die off: Jesus. We explained the Gospel in detail, and he soaked it up. 

Many people on the floor have witnessed the miracle, and we’ve not only continued sharing the Good News about Jesus but have heard that the staff is talking amongst themselves about what happened to Chioma too. What a fun day!!!

Chioma’s chest tube was removed today. The procedure went smoothly, and she is being monitored until tomorrow to ensure everything remains stable post-op. The hospitalist said there’s no reason she should stay in the hospital if tomorrow’s final tests look good, and we’re very excited to go home!

Also amazingly, the off-label use of Albendazol — an FDA-approved anti-parasitic drug that is currently being studied for its powerful anti-cancer efficacy — that we requested as a cancer treatment since Chioma’s regular oncology treatments can’t be administered in the hospital was approved! It’s extremely rare for hospitals to administer drugs for off-label uses that aren’t mainstream yet (even though it’s entirely legal, ethical, and often medically necessary), but we received favor from God and the hospital staff. They plan to start it tomorrow. Hopefully, we’ll be going home tomorrow though, so we will use the related Fenbendazol again at that point. However, my hope is that the 300 pages of recent peer-reviewed research we provided that helped make the case will pave the way for benefiting future patients to have access as well.

As medical staff have struggled to grapple with Chioma's miraculous recovery, they have been both confused as well as divided over whether she should keep using the bipap over the past 24 hours, and some were pressuring her to do it using fear tactics. Chioma didn't have any peace about their tactics or using the bipap at all, so we spent the morning praying for wisdom and discernment. While listening for an answer, God helped us discern their manipulative tactics from the reality that God is healing her supernaturally. He also told us that Chioma doesn't really need the bipap anymore, but she REALLY needs rest. So with a shift of focus away from the distractions, Chioma continued to decline the bipap, praised Jesus with singing, and rested well today. Chioma is more alert and has more energy today than any day here yet. Her lungs don't seem to be outputting any concerning levels of fluid, so the chest tube is coming out tomorrow morning. Praise God! I think that means that it's possible we could go home as early as tomorrow. Please pray for favor with discharge going smoothly and efficiently in God's perfect timing. 

More awesome progress happened the past two days. On Sunday, Chioma graduated to using the high-flow oxygen nasal cannula, and she shattered expectations by being stable using it all day. That went so well that they let her lower the flow rate towards the end of the day and ultimately use it for the night as well instead of the bipap. She slept the best she has in many days because of how much more peaceful it is to breathe more naturally as opposed to air being literally forced into her lungs by a bipap.

Today, Chioma was able to start eating solid foods. She wanted a cheese burger with “real cheese” (i.e. not American cheese), lol. She ate the whole thing, and she was more hungry the rest of the day than I’ve seen her in weeks. She had multiple protein shakes and ate a good salmon dinner. She also walked about 100 ft through the ICU and thanked team members for helping save her life as she went. It was a beautiful moment. We were moved to a hospital room soon after. This afternoon in the new room, we got to share our miracle testimony with our nurse and tell her the Good News about Jesus — how unlike all man-made religions where people try to be good enough to be in good standing with God, Jesus told the truth that no one can be good enough, so He paid our debt for us, and all we need to do is trust Him, which results in friendship with God and doing good things out of love for Him. We told her how Jesus has transformed our lives from misery to being full of love, joy, and peace, and how we’re not afraid of death because we know where we’re going afterwards. The nurse soaked it all up like how a dry sponge absorbs water. On my way out for the evening to stay the night at a friend’s house (while family stays with Chioma for the night), the nurse hugged and thanked me for all we’d shared with her and said she intended to start praying. I have been praying for boldness to share the Gospel after God showed off by rescuing Chioma because I want to make the most of the opportunity to help people meet the same God we know. The more I study Scripture, the more I want to imitate how the Good News about Jesus was spread so effectively in the early Church — very often there would be a miracle or sign, and then those who observed would be told about Jesus whose power had done it. Paul even said once that he refused to make an appeal for people to believe in Jesus by using human reasoning and instead did so by demonstrating God’s power and love. Believe me, I would have absolutely rather not been in the ICU with Chioma and endured so much suffering, but I am so very grateful for how God showed off His love in an amazing way by turning the situation around to prove Who He is. It sets us all up to tell people about Jesus — every last one of us who have been watching, praying, and serving! God showed off this week in a beautiful way that advertises His kingdom — friendship with God, the King of the Universe. 

More amazing news: Chioma just officially graduated from the ICU. There are currently no hospital beds available, so she’ll still be in the same ICU room, but is no longer ICU status. Praise Jesus!!!

(Continued from previous post…)

Yesterday afternoon, much fervent prayer, fellowship, and worship happened in the ICU room. I was encouraged by a friend whose testimony is similar to ours where his wife was in the ICU and only expected to live for hours, but she fully recovered over time and totally against all medical expectation. He reminded me of how Jesus has healed Chioma 2,000 years ago (“by His stripes we were healed”) and that it’s not about working to earn God’s healing but rather resting by trusting Him that we receive what He paid for. If there is any unbelief in us (which according to Scripture can hinder answered prayers and the exercising of Jesus’ authority given to all disciples), simply ask the Lord to expose, correct, and instruct to deal with it; and obey all He says. As He himself learned to do that, his support for his wife in the face of medical impossibility was honored by God with amazing results. Their testimony is beautifully documented here for those interested: https://youtu.be/K6WzpFZLfGs?si=5G7AycwfL3jGaywh. I was deeply encouraged. I shared with Chioma what my friend and I had discussed as well. 

What happened next was God showing off.

Both Chioma and I slept well last night. Chioma’s CO2 levels in the blood had come down to 54 during the night (45 is the top of the healthy range, and she had started at a deadly 107 the day before). When I showed up in the morning, Chioma’s condition was drastically improved. Whereas she has been extremely weak and barely able to stay awake constantly the day before, she was alert. Whereas she had been unable to write on a notepad what she wanted to say (since speaking thru the bipap mask was nearly impossible) the day before, she was writing beautifully and clearly. Around 11:45 am, Chioma was breathing so well that she was transitioned to a trial period of being off the bipap on a high-flow-rate nasal cannula oxygen machine. She did so well in that, she was allowed to sit on the edge of the bed. She did so well, she was allowed to drink provided clear liquids under supervision — some chicken broth, vegetable broth, apple juice, water, and a frozen mixed fruit blend. While eating, Chioma had no supplemental oxygen and maintained 100% oxygen saturation for multiple periods of nearly up to a minute each. She did so well, she was allowed to walk over to a recliner chair to sit for a while (to get some movement in and time out of the uncomfortable hospital bed). Overall, Chioma was off the bipap for over 6 hours!!! (Remember, just yesterday all the medical team told us that in their opinion there was no way other than a miracle that Chioma could ever improve enough to get off the bipap!) Chioma also managed communicating with the family and several friends who were present to help today. She was very exhausted by the end of the afternoon from all she had done, and began sleeping deeply with great vital numbers right after being put back on the bipap.

Chioma’s nurse today repeatedly acknowledged just how amazing Chioma’s recovery was. She called her “the star of the ICU.” She said what Chioma was able to do completely exceeded all of her expectations for what would be possible. She expects that tomorrow, Chioma will likely be able to graduate to eating semi-solid foods and hopefully exceed the total time off the bipap even further.

What an awesome God we serve!

God is so good. What a challenging and rewarding past two days. They have been extremely difficult, but also a major turn around, in stages. 

Wednesday evening, I was feeling the weight of everything emotionally, and for the first time in a long time, I cried. Chioma was not improving much, and I was feeling overwhelmed with what was looking like an impossible situation. I asked the Holy Spirit what I should do, and He led me out to my car. I sat, laid out my heart to God asking for help, and then listened. As He brought to mind promises in His Word and filled me with His peace that surpasses understanding, I began to experience restorative rest in my soul. I went back into the hospital lobby and opened my Bible app to read the Word. When I opened it, I just decided to read what was in front of me to see what it said, which just happened to be Psalm 34. Amazing. Exactly what I needed to hear, particularly the end of it:

“When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken. Affliction will slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. The Lord redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.” (Psalm‬ ‭34‬:‭17‬-‭22‬ ‭ESV‬‬)

I was encouraged.

Wednesday night, Chioma greatly struggled to sleep, though it was better than the night before. She actually got some sleep. However, in the morning, I awoke to an emergency team attending to Chioma since she was unconscious, struggling to breathe, and her CO2 blood levels were extremely-dangerously high at 107 (should be around 40). The chest tube had drained nearly 700 cc of fluid since it was installed the day before, but her left lung did not re-inflate, at least not significantly as of Thursday morning when the X-ray was done. So she was essentially only breathing with part of her right lung, and not getting enough CO2 out compared to how much oxygen she was getting in. The hospitalist and others began encouraging me to put Chioma on palliative care (make her comfortable while she dies), and I said no way, but was struggling to keep hope amidst the heavy emotions. 

I sent out a call for prayer and help. Our pastors, some friends, and much of my immediate family came to pray and visit. My sister-in-law was first to arrive with Eliana. Chioma was unconscious and couldn’t be awakened, and Eliana was a bit uncomfortable with the loud bipap machine on momma’s face. When the others arrived, powerful prayers of Jesus’ authority were declared, and since then, the situation began to improve. The Lord told our pastors on their way to the hospital that that day (Thursday) was the day of “sozo” for Chioma — the Greek word used in Scripture meaning “saved, healed, delivered”. While they prayed, the lung surgeon resident physician was injecting the next round of TPA, which was probably unpleasant for Chioma. She woke up, and I held Eliana in her line of sight before she dozed back to sleep a minute or so later. I knew they saw each other, but wasn’t sure whether Chioma would remember it. 

After the refreshing prayer time, Chioma was taken to the ICU, a wonderful team that actually has hope was assigned, and Chioma woke up!!! She was (and still is) exhausted, but was able to get some words out, move herself around in bed, and was initiating breaths rather than the machine doing most of the work like it had while she was unconscious. Praise Jesus! I filled Chioma in on what happened since the only thing she remembered all day was seeing Eliana briefly but didn’t know what else had happened. After a few hours in the ICU on the bipap, Chioma’s CO2 came down to 72.4 — a huge leap forward. Six hours later around 11 pm, it had come down further to 68.8. Overnight, all her critical blood gas levels have continued to improve slowly, and her limbs have warmed up from improved circulation now too. I stayed with her all night to continue encouraging, praying for, and comforting her.

I am so, so grateful Chioma is receiving Jesus’ healing and fighting for life. The bipap machine is extremely uncomfortable, but better than the only alternative of intubation. Chioma is very eager to get off of it. 

Please continue to pray for full restoration of her breathing and overall health. Thank you all for fighting with us! God bless you all.

Please pray. Chioma’s breathing isn’t doing well. Her body is cold as well. They just put her on a bipap, and are considering intubation. They are asking if we want to make her comfortable to pass or keep fighting. The answer is obvious. I told them we’re praying for a miracle and planning on her walking out of here. Just sharing so you know. We have gotten 650 cc of fluid out now, which is good. Pray for strength and total healing.

End of day report: About another 100 cc came out prior to the TPA being injected about an hour ago, which is wonderful. So all in all, about 200 cc of effusion fluid is drained now, and Chioma is noticeably breathing better. Still a significant ways to go before her breathing normalizes, but she’s making progress. The tube drainage is stopped while the TPA works for the next 3 hours, and then it will be reopened to drain the dissolved trapped and gelatinized fluid. The plan is to treat with TPA like this once a day at the hospital (as an inpatient) for 3 days, and then evaluate for next steps.

We’re now at HonorHealth Shea Hospital as of about 9:30 last night. Chioma slept for several hours, but overall was in severe discomfort all night. She's exhausted from multiple days of very little sleep, and was struggling to get enough oxygen. Oxycodone helped her calm down enough to get a little rest overnight, but that was all the night nurse was able to do. A team of about 7 people just came in to help figure out better ways of getting her oxygen since her oxygen was dipping down to 84 this morning. She's now on a high-flow oxygen cannula, and immediately is doing better, staying at 100 percent oxygen concentration consistently. She's starting to fall asleep again, praise God! The lung surgeon team resident doctor visited too, and they have her NPO in hopes a procedure can be done today, whatever that may end up being -- likely a chest tube with inserting TPA (a clot buster) to help break up the loculated fluid around the left lung. Very grateful for the wonderful team of experts here. The Lord is answering our prayers.

Another highlight from yesterday was that Allie brought Eliana over to visit (see the picture attached to this post). Chioma was on very strong pain killers at the time in anticipation for the procedure that never happened, so she was a bit out of it. But it was still a wonderful blessing to have Allie and Eliana bring their sweet, kind presence to visit us. :)

And also very grateful for multiple family members helping bring much appreciated items like a cot for me to sleep on, phone chargers, snacks, etc. And for others giving monetary gifts to help. We are very grateful for everything.

Today has been exhausting and frustrating, but it is coming to a close with some good news: because the hospital we’re at is unable to do anything more for Chioma, we’re being transferred soon to HonorHealth Shea where our lung surgeon can hopefully get Chioma in for surgery as early as tomorrow or Thursday. We don’t know exactly what will be done yet, but he has been one of our best advocates throughout the journey, and he also is a believer. We’re very grateful that they are moving us to his care. Thank you for praying and supporting us!

They’ve confirmed that there’s pneumonia in both lungs, especially the left. The left lung is almost entirely filled with fluid inside and out. IV antibiotics have been started. It’s likely we’ll need to stay in the hospital for 2-3 days, but we’re waiting to hear from the docs whether we can do everything outpatient. Good news is there’s no blood clot in the lungs. 

We’re in the ER for Chioma right now. Overnight, breathing became very difficult. We increased her oxygen progressively from 2 to 5 L/min, and her oxygen saturation was still in the low 90’s as of around 3:30 am. We prayed and sensed the Lord lead us to go get things checked out. Please join us in praying and believing for complete healing.

Great news today: Chioma got the left lung drain tubing removed, so now both lungs are free and clear of drainage tubing. There are still significant issues with the left lung not being fully open, but no reason to keep tubing in according to the surgeon. Praise Jesus for the progress!

From Chioma:

Y’all, last night I slept the best I’ve slept in the past 4 days. I should have asked for prayer on this point earlier! In that vein, pray about for the lumps on my body to go away and not return. And thank God for the restoration of my functional mobility. I took a walk outside for the first time since before the hospitalization. I used the wheelchair as my walker and Kyle wheeled me back home; but, my legs carried me over 400 feet. Woo hoo! Praise God! Thank you for praying!

From Chioma:

Hi all! 

Prayer requests: The first night after this week’s conventional infusions, I got good sleep. The next three nights were dicey but not nearly as challenging as they were during the prior rounds of immunotherapy. I notice that quality sleep, basic breathing, and basic digestion are like the legs of a three-legged stool for my body’s feeling well: they are really important! My sweet husband has been bearing a lot of load as caregiver to me and Eliana. His body is in need of rest and recovery now too. He’s battled a fever twice in the past week. Even as I write, he’s trying to snag some extra snooze time as he can. He is working so hard. Please pray for my sleep and Kyle’s recovery. 

This morning I was meditating on Psalm 126. It’s a short but powerful 6 verses that was possibly written after Israel was brought back from Babylonian captivity to the Promised Land. I never noticed the difference between verse 4 and verses 5-6. Verse 4 (“restore our fortunes, LORD, as streams in the South”) refers to the sudden flash floods that would quickly bring desperately-needed water to the desert South. Verses 5-6 (“Those who sow in tears shall harvest with joyful shouting; one who goes here and there weeping, carrying his bag of seed, shall indeed come again with a shout of joy, bringing his sheaves with him”) describes the blessed results of the slower process and sowing and reaping seed. On our journey, we’ve seen the sudden streams and the slower sowing/reaping. I must confess, I prefer the sudden streams, lol. But, I’m grateful for all the ways Papa God works. Thanks for standing with us for the suddenly and slowly. It will be joy in the end!

Great news: yesterday’s conventional IV infusions went very smoothly, and Chioma has been experiencing almost no side effects. Praise God! We prayed and used two prescribed anti-nausea meds, Benadryl, and a slower infusion rate. Thank you for praying and encouraging us as well!

We have been greatly blessed to spend the weekend up in the cool air of Forest Lakes at a friend’s cabin to rest, fellowship, and pray. We are part of a weekly prayer group that for the past several years has gone on a retreat up to this cabin to rest and pray together. The fresh, cool air of pine forests is one of my favorite things in life, particularly after summer rain. Not only is there concrete evidence that breathing air freshened by forest plant life is immune system boosting (here’s an fun study from Japan demonstrating this for those interested: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2793341, but the lower levels of oxygen due to high elevation are also a good lung workout. Chioma’s breathing did amazingly well. We increased her supplemental oxygen from 2 L/m to 3 L/m a few times when she was uncomfortable, but otherwise it seemed like she was breathing pretty much just as well as at home, and she pushed herself to exercise her lungs as well. Chioma’s breathing was markedly better when we got back to Phoenix than when we left. Praise God! Chioma found the retreat refreshing to her body and soul. She even experienced fewer overall symptoms there than she has been experiencing at home. We are deeply grateful to our friends who hosted and served us so generously this weekend. It was such a gift. Here are a few photos from our trip: https://share.icloud.com/photos/0c2Ejgaam5efUoMmYzOjlrYqQ

We’re very excited that today the lung surgeon took out the right lung PleurX tube!!! And we’re on track to remove the left one next Friday as well because the excess fluid stopped accumulating over the past month. Praise God! The left lung appears to still be partially trapped shut, but they’re also unsure of exactly what’s going on in there as there’s no way to know definitively without surgery, which is definitely not worth it just to observe the healing process. The lung surgery team — per protocol — advised us the left lung may never fully reopen, but that’s not the first time we’ve been told that (read our past updates for the story on that). ;) We told them we’re trusting Jesus to open it all the way, to which the lung surgeon said, “That’s what you gotta do” and then smiled. We are fairly sure he’s a believer too, and such a fantastic surgeon. :)

Another great milestone of improvement is that Chioma graduated today to a new level of training exercise — the Vasper machine — simultaneous to using an incumbent bike while on high levels of oxygen. Here’s a picture from this morning: https://share.icloud.com/photos/040tqLAuLTNVdOZ7hVh_d5SZg. The wellness clinic where she did this is such a blessing. They use techniques that are next-generation (ahead of mainstream medicine) and so far only used by NASA, professional athletes, and cutting-edge medical clinics. The Vasper, for example, was developed to be used for exercise with high oxygen intake in order to help astronauts maintain strength in space (very difficult) by achieving 6 hours worth of intense exercise in 20 minutes through strategic methodologies. Truly amazing wisdom and technology. This is very useful in Chioma’s recovery as it allows her to improve her strength and lung capacity in a way that is safe. We are aiming to start progressing with the Vasper in the next week or so on top of what we’re already doing there (a juvent micro-vibrating plate for zero-impact exercise, and PEMF for stimulating rapid bone regrowth and eliminating cancer-related bone pain). 

I’ve been thinking how we’ve struggled to personally thank everyone for everything they’ve done to help us amidst the emergency circumstances we’ve been going through. There are so many words of gratitude we owe, and we try hard to give all that are deserved. However, if we have not personally reached out to thank you for anything, please know we intend to when possible. And please know that we are immensely grateful. God bless each of you for supporting us on this journey. 

Our primarily prayer request for today is regarding tomorrow’s conventional treatment that includes Perjeta and Herceptin, the two immunotherapies that at least one of is believed to have been causing the severe side effect symptoms Chioma has been experiencing after infusions each time (every 3 weeks). Please pray against side effects and for continued progress. We are planning to use at least Benadryl to help, if not additional options the oncology team may recommend tomorrow in addition depending on how it all goes. Thank you!

Some highlights from the past week and a half:

A few days after I posted the most recent update, the shortness of breath, nausea, headaches, constant fatigue, and other unpleasant symptoms Chioma experienced as a result of medication side effects/allergic reaction went away. Thank you all who prayed! We have worked out a strategy to help better mitigate these symptoms during the next immunotherapy treatment (every 3 weeks). As Chioma struggled for about 5 days to keep food down let alone eat, she unfortunately lost a considerable amount of weight again during that 5-day period, and she was is already very underweight to begin with. She didn’t become nearly as underweight as in the hospital, but it was a significant setback. We are praising God that she’s putting on weight again this week and feeling much better overall. 

We are also very excited that the tumor continues shrinking bit by bit, and especially that both lungs have stopped outputting almost any excess fluid, meaning that both PluerX drainage tubes can hopefully be removed within the coming weeks. The left tube, however, seems to have been bumped accidentally and was bleeding late last week. We cleaned it, and the wound care clinic helped further care for it as well. Since the tube goes straight into the chest cavity of the left lung, it’s a very critical wound to keep clean. 

We are so very grateful for our friends who have stepped up to help drive Chioma to medical appointments, which require being out and about roughly 4-10 hours per day 4-5 days/week. It’s a full time job driving her from place to place, and it’s been a huge relief for me to be able to get some extra rest while recovering myself and also get some paid work done. Praise God I’ve been feeling much better the past week as well.

We have also been encouraged by many testimonies of God healing people who have battled cancer, both with and without the use of medicine. Yesterday, one such story was told to us in person by a woman whom God healed of stage 4 breast cancer without the use of any conventional drugs and hardly an alternative medicine regimen either back around 2007 (I don’t clearly recall the year she mentioned, but I believe it was 2007). A mutual friend introduced us at a healing conference we attended, and after telling her testimony, she then prayed for and prophesied life over Chioma. 

We so appreciate the prayers and support of so many of you all. Thank you for being on this journey with us!

I’ve gotten behind in writing updates recently primarily due to feeling overwhelmed and exhausted the past two weeks in trying to keep up with everything. I didn’t manage stress well enough and came down with a sinus infection. I’m grateful to be feeling better now though. Thank you for your patience. 

We’re very grateful that the cancer is continuing to retreat. Praise God!!! Most days, we are noticing small reductions in the primary tumor size, which is fast in the grand scheme of things. Several small spots on the skin have appeared to worsen in the past month amidst the overall rapid die off, but the oncologist isn’t concerned as the overall progress is positive. Some minor bone pain has returned a few times in the recent weeks too, but it has disappeared during or soon after PEMF therapy each time (an alternative therapy that helps stimulate rapid bone regrowth without the side effects of the comparable conventional drug options). Chioma is also continuing to regain strength, body mass, and blood health slowly and steadily (when hospitalized and struggling to hold on to life, she was severely malnourished, anemic, and underweight). There’s much to be thankful for!

One of the biggest challenges with cancer treatment this week is that we’ve isolated the cause of the repeated episodes of severe shortness of breath to almost certainly being caused by one of the two immunotherapies Chioma is doing. It’s very likely both a result of fast cancer die off and potentially also an allergic reaction to one of the medications (probably Perjeta), which has also been causing nausea, vomiting, fatigue, headaches, insomnia, and more (all common side effects). It’s better than chemo side effects, but still not fun at all. We’re working with our doctor’s team to help mitigate the issues, and most importantly also seeking the Lord for help. He has been giving us wisdom, discernment, and some victories so far. Please join us in praying. 

We’re also immensely grateful for the awesome generosity of friends and family in this season — from helping with housing us, to childcare, to meals, to financial support. God has been blessing us through so many people to meet our needs abundantly, just as His Word promises. We continue to have more than enough to keep going, and we thank you all for being a part of His miracle! To help quantify this, we have spent over $41k on healthcare costs for mold toxicity and cancer treatments so far this year, and over $49k has been given in the past few months (this doesn’t include the non-quantifiable gifts of housing, childcare, meals, rides, and more). Thank you God! And thank you all reading this for being a part of it in whatever ways you have! We are humbly amazed and grateful beyond what words can express.

As promised several weeks ago, we have also started to keep a public log of our spending related to cancer care for accountability purposes. We want you to know we are stewarding gifts wisely, and providing direct insight seems to be the best way to do that. To get started, we’ve added a large handful of transactions along with links to scanned receipts that have all personal info redacted. The list is NOT exhaustive or fully up-to-date yet, but it will continue to be updated as we go. It’s a work in progress, but we didn’t want to delay sharing it any longer as it is helpful already. With fraud being an extreme risk now due to things like AI advancements, we have taken steps to hide info that could result in various forms of identity theft while also aiming to be as transparent as possible for accountability. It’s a delicate balance, but I think it will work great. We decided to redact all billing and contact info (including clinic names) from the receipts, but if you want to know who our doctors/clinics are and/or are interested in what we’re doing that’s working to help yourself or a friend, by all means feel free to ask us privately. We’re happy to share what we’re doing and learning to help. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18xB11jJL5CNA2l3C34cdguShl0M6sTSeqUs7DxuzL7U/edit

As this journey is ongoing, there continue to be many needs. Prayer is obviously most important as it’s the foundation of walking in step with God under His protective leadership through “the valley of the shadow of death”. Please keep praying!

Other ways you can help beyond prayer:

1. Meals continue to be very helpful for us. If you’d like to provide a meal, you can signup here: https://www.mealtrain.com/trains/g6r26e

2. We need help driving Chioma to and from appointments on weekdays (4-5 days per week) so that I can resume working more. We’re working on arranging medical transportation through Medicaid, but as that may or may not work, we are looking for helpers in the meantime. Please contact me if you might be willing to help. My number is (480) 797-9984. 

3. While our emergency spending has reduced from $30k/mo to closer to $15k/mo with Medicaid secured now, we are anticipating the cash cost to remain near $15k/mo for at least the next several months, if not longer. If you’d like to help support us financially, you can give on our GiveSendGo page, or by sending money privately to avoid transaction fees if preferred (info on how to do that is on the GiveSendGo page). https://www.givesendgo.com/Chioma

Thank you for being on this healing journey with us! We love, appreciate, and bless you all!

Answered prayer: all approvals were rushed thru, and we’ll be able to go forward with the IV treatments today, as well as the echocardiogram and port placement surgery tomorrow. What could have taken days was done in hours. Praise God!! And thank you all for praying!

Quick prayer request: Due to our financial situation, we were approved for Medicaid coverage (100% of conventional treatments will now be covered by federal aid, bringing our monthly medical bills down from about $30k/mo to closer to $15k/mo). However, per program requirements, all of Chioma’s treatments and procedures have unfortunately been placed on indefinite hold due until a required series of re-approvals happen. We and our medical teams have done all we can to expedite this. Please join us in thanking God for His provision and asking for favor.

We’re excited to share some great news: yesterday at the wound care clinic (the team overseeing care for the wound where the tumor has broken thru the skin), we discovered the size of the wound has decreased by about 1 cm both horizontally and vertically. This is a sign of initial cancer die off in the large breast tumor. Praise God! At our check in with the conventional oncologist today, the brain MRI and PET scan results from Monday were discussed as well, and where there had been suspected cancer in the spleen and uterus while hospitalized, there is no more evidence of disease. There is also no detectable disease in the brain, which had not been previously tested. We are very grateful for the progress!

Thank you for praying for Chioma’s lungs! God gave me grace to catch a major mistake made by the lung surgeon team of misreading a faulty X-ray image. Resolving their error resulted in us figuring out how to correctly drain the excess fluid from Chioma’s left lung: 200cc on Thursday, and another 100cc today. The excess fluid accumulation is trending downward in a great way, and Chioma’s breathing is much, much better than it was. There is still much lung strength rebuilding needed, and any remaining cancer in the lungs needs to die of course too. We are celebrating today that the right lung has pretty much stopped draining excess fluid, which is an excellent victory along the journey of recovery, and means the PleurX tube used for draining fluid should be able to be removed in two weeks. We plan to speak with the surgeon’s office tomorrow regarding next steps.

We’re also very grateful Chioma is starting to notice more positive results from the supportive IV’s again as she is increasingly able to tolerate higher amounts, especially the Vitamin C, which kills cancer similar to chemo, but with almost zero side effects beyond being a bit dehydrating. As we increase the dosage each visit, she can feel more and more of the primary tumor sites bubbling and dissolving, which has been releasing some of the gripping pressure it had been inflicting on her rib cage. Praise God! The combination of conventional and cutting-edge integrative therapies is proving to be very helpful. Perhaps the most exciting thing week was that Chioma has almost no more pain!!! For months, she had been battling debilitating pain. The slightest movement was excruciatingly painful. Cancer eating one’s bones is not enjoyable, let alone when it simultaneously attacks other organs too. Chioma has been on strong very pain killers for a while (some even caused awful hallucinations), but in the past week, she has not needed almost any pain meds at all, other than to treat headaches at night. We learned on Friday about another patient of our primary naturopathic oncologist’s who after starting inhaled molecular hydrogen also just recently reported having cancer-related bone pain go away as well. We believe hydrogen likewise been a primary factor for Chioma’s progress.

Today Eliana is 10 months old. It makes me sad to think about how 7 of those months have been tumultuous for our family — after our home flooded on December 30, we have moved 7 times between various family member’s homes and the hospital, and most of our belongings are in storage. We find ourselves longing to regain a sense of normalcy. Yet, despite the trial we’re walking through, we are so thankful for how God is using what Satan intended for evil instead for our good. There are more good things to be thankful for than I have time to write. Just a few of the main highlights though include that our families have bonded closer than ever (in my opinion), and healing in relationships has occurred as we fight together. There is a beautiful synergy that occurs when families increasingly operate more and more the way Jesus intended for His Church to be — we start to experience more and more of heaven on earth.

We give all the glory to God for causing Chioma to recover. And thank you for being a part of supporting it!

We got some unexpected great news today: when the emergency x-ray was done to see what’s going on with Chioma’s lungs, they discovered that despite some remaining excess fluid that hasn’t been draining properly, the lungs appear to be fully re-inflated!!! I had a huge smile on my face praising Jesus for quite some time after hearing this news. :) His healing power, wisdom, and leadership through all of this has done what we were initially told repeatedly was impossible. We have done a significant number of alternative treatments including inhaled molecular hydrogen (to help kill cancer and dissolve fibrosis) that I strongly believe have played a great role in supporting this. God is so good! 

Despite the great news, Chioma’s breathing is still very labored, beyond what doctors have been able to explain yet. Today was quite difficult. More investigation will continue tomorrow. Please continue praying for healing and wisdom. 

Today’s conventional infusions went very well overall. They even — without us asking or knowing we could ask — reworked the infusion schedule to help us save another $2,500 by utilizing a less expensive infusion method! So grateful.

Even as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we know our Shepherd is working all these things out for our good, for His Kingdom purposes. Praise God!

And thank you for fighting with us!

Chioma has had an increase in shortness of breath the past few days, today reaching levels similar to before we took her to the hospital. She has not slept much or well for several days, and we think exhaustion is a primary cause of the breathing difficulty since her lungs have not been draining much fluid anymore. We just scheduled an emergency x-ray for the lung surgeon as well so we can see if anything else is going on too. She feels noticeably better after supportive IV's today, and she's napping now. We are excited that tomorrow morning we begin the first of the conventional aggressive cancer treatments (2 immunotherapies and 1 hormone therapy). Please continue praying for healing and wisdom for all. Thanks!

P.S. I should also mention that yesterday Chioma watched Eliana walk unassisted for the first time! Not to be outdone by her daughter, Chioma also made big progress by putting in at least 5x the number of unassisted steps as the baby. The competition continues...

More great news — more answers to prayer! Today, answers flooded in after we asked for prayer. Through a series of phone calls, we now have our conventional treatments scheduled to begin Tuesday morning. Praise God! And thank you for praying!

As Jesus always does, He has provided all we need; and as He often does, not how we expected. The way this particular cancer center works with billing for cost sharing programs requires us to pay a (heavily-discounted) cash price up front, and then be reimbursed only after they get payment from the cost sharing program. It’s an unfortunate safety mechanism we’ve not encountered anywhere else due to some cost sharing programs having cheated them in the past. This means our bill on Tuesday will be about $17k for the treatments (wow), and could take several months to get reimbursed. Praise God we have the cash in hand to start though! And we are also now quickly working to get an ACA health insurance plan that can take over so we can proceed utilizing regular insurance for this going forward. We’re thanking God we qualify for that due to recently moving! Until an ACA plan can be approved, subsequent treatments require cash pay of about $9,500 every 3 weeks, so please pray for favor with getting a new insurance plan to take over quickly, and for favor getting reimbursed fast so those funds can be utilized on other important supplemental treatments.

Blessings to you all!

Kyle

Until now, we’ve only been sharing updates over on CaringBridge. To make it easier for those who don’t want to sign up for a user account there to follow us, I will begin posting updates here now too.

Before I share the updates, first I want to share the prayer requests:

1. Praise God that Chioma’s strength is continuing to greatly improve! She is walking closer to 200-300 steps per day now, and can even walk several feet without a walker sometimes as long as someone is nearby to help if needed.
2. Unfortunately, the cancer is so aggressive that the tumor has been noticeably growing again, even with the treatments we’ve been doing that had temporarily halted it. Keep praying for God to intervene.
3. Our conventional treatments (the most aggressive cancer killing therapies) are currently being held up by insurance verification, which is very frustrating. We were told a few days ago that it could take around 10 days. Please pray for God’s favor to expedite this and against any plans of the enemy to interfere.

Now for the more detailed updates: 

We’re thankful to have made some great progress further narrowing our treatment strategy. After much diligent prayer and doctor interviewing, we have decided to work with a highly-reputable, very humble medical oncologist who has prescribed conventional treatments we want to get started (two immunotherapies, one hormone therapy, and strategies to help Chioma recover from severe anemia). The doctor does not believe Chioma has enough strength to tolerate chemo at this time, so it’s off the table for now, and he believes we may be able to avoid it altogether. One thing we greatly appreciate is his respect for alternative therapies beyond his expertise in allopathic medicine, which is a humility rarely found in the conventional oncologists we’ve encountered. It’s very important to us to holistically support Chioma’s body amidst harsh conventional treatments. That the doctor regularly agrees to work with patients who do both allopathic and naturopathic regimens together is such a refreshing, rare, and valuable thing. We are blessed to have been referred to him. Most importantly, we are also encouraged by his hope. Unlike the majority of doctors we’ve spoken with who have thought the best Chioma should expect is a number of days or months to live with what they could offer, this doctor makes no promises but said he believes he can get her to remission. He also said, “there’s a lot of faith in medicine, and a lot of medicine in faith”, so it’s so important to fight “physically, mentally, and spiritually.” It’s so much better to work with someone who has hope and respects our faith in God than doctors who mock it like we experienced in the hospital. 

We are also continuing to work with four other integrative clinics for various supplementary treatments that build up the immune system and help kill cancer (e.g. high dose IVs like Vitamin C, curcumin, Quercitin, etc.; PEMF; Rife; Fenbendazol; a regimen of supplements; and several additional things we’re considering adding) at the best quality and price we could find locally. We’re very thankful. Funding it all continues to be a significant challenge, but we are grateful that our cost sharing plan (functions like insurance) will at least reimburse most of the conventional treatments, and we’re so grateful for those who have partnered with us in supporting Chioma’s recovery for everything that’s not covered!! Everything from meals, to moving help, to childcare, to running errands, etc. has been a blessing beyond what words can describe. What’s not covered by our cost sharing “insurance” has been costing us about $15k/month (and some options we are weighing could increase that closer to $20-25k/mo). As we have limited income, retirement/savings, and resources of our own that would only last for several months at that rate, it’s been truly amazing how God has been providing. We’re confident that with His leadership, guidance, and provision, we will not lack what we need, as His Word promises (Matt 6). We’ve made significant progress getting costs as low as possible, but still are working to get some of the most important conventional treatment costs figured out and planned (we’re mainly waiting on the cancer center). We’ll share more updates on specific needs as we get the full treatment plan finalized in the coming weeks. AND, for accountability purposes, we will be sharing a link to view our receipts for large bills so you can know how your support has been stewarded. 

Thank you for helping us fight to restore Chioma’s body! We love and appreciate you all.

Sincerely,

Kyle