By Strength of Hand

A Story of Faith and Healing Written by Becky Isom Call

“I think we have a problem,” the doctor told me. It was May 11, 2007, and my chubby four-month-old, Matthias, was lying happily on the crinkly paper of an exam table, maybe sucking on a fist or grabbing a foot. I had no concerns about his health—I thought it would be a typical well-check appointment—but I stopped chatting when Dr. Bennett became focused on Matthias’s belly, poking with gloved fingers and squeezing more and more until I was certain that Matthias would cry. Dr. Bennett went out of the room to make some phone calls and at last explained that there was likely a tumor, and we would need to go directly to the hospital for a scan. In a flood of mundane details mixed with life-altering ones, I heard him telling me not to feed Matthias, because he may need to be fasting for the scan, and he would call me later once he received the results. I dressed Matthias again and buckled him into his infant carrier, but I couldn’t wrap my mind around what the doctor was saying. Cancer?

It was spring. We had just moved into our first home. Hours earlier I had walked our kindergartener, Adam, home from school carrying the poster that he had proudly presented as star student of the week. Passing grape vines covered in new leaves, pushing the double stroller with three-year-old Sam and little Matthias, I had told myself that this was the dawn of a brilliant chapter for our family. Our new home was an outdated yellow rambler atop a hill and surrounded by fields. Here in this home in this backwater little neighborhood, we imagined a pastoral life for ourselves: the boys would run free like wild horses, our fruit trees would hang heavy with sweet plums and pears in the fall, and birds would visit the feeder over our breakfast nook every morning. After years of living on a student budget in cramped apartments, we now had a home, my husband had a job, and it was spring.

But after the appointment, driving by pastures of grazing animals, I was gripped by fear and tried to process what was ahead. In the jumble of questions and uncertainty, faint wisps of a hymn came to mind. I couldn’t quite recall how it all went—I couldn’t remember the rhymed endings or even the title of the hymn—but the message that came was, “The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose . . . I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.” It was a message that penetrated my heart with spiritual power: whatever this journey might bring, I knew we wouldn’t walk it alone.

Following the scan at the hospital, we waited in an exam room for results. Matthias fussed on my knee and then began to cry. I needed to nurse him as much as he needed to be fed, but I followed the orders to wait until we knew if we’d need another scan. I sang, I paced, I whispered to Matthias. I knew I shouldn’t overreact if he needed to wait several more minutes or even hours to eat, but his frantic wailing fueled my dread that this was only the beginning of times when my baby would suffer, and I’d be powerless to help.

My husband and I spent much of the next week at Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City with Matthias, where he had a surgery to biopsy the tumor and place a port on his chest for chemo. He was diagnosed with stage 3 neuroblastoma, and the months of treatment began. All told, our little guy would go on to spend 79 days in the hospital and have 5 rounds of chemo, 4 surgeries, and 5 blood transfusions, along with a garble of other acronyms: 3 permanent IVs, 2 NG tubes, 1 NJ tube, 3 CT scans, 2 MIBG scans, 28 days without food on TPN, 3 visits to the ER, and many long nights in the PICU. (Not that any fretful mother was keeping track!) And of course, all of that meant that, like I feared, I was at times a helpless witness to Matthias’s pain.

Before the surgery to remove the tumor, I handed Matthias to a man in scrubs. “Do you want his pacifier?” I asked the man tentatively. He kindly accepted it before turning and retreating down the sterile corridor to the operating room. With empty arms, I went into a bathroom stall to cry. I was afraid—acutely aware that I had no control over the outcome of this surgery. I bowed my head in silent prayer, “Oh Father!” Through the tears, I felt a gentle peace, the kind that “passeth all understanding” (Philippians 4:7). With that peace came a reminder of other times when the Lord had comforted me. 

Our journey with cancer was one of close contrasts: light following darkness, and darkness chasing light. The moment when we learned that the surgeon had successfully removed Matthias’s tumor will always be one of our brightest memories. But our hope of a quick recovery soon faded when a postoperative problem led to many more weeks in the hospital, and even several moments of crisis. Matthias would come home for a week or two, only to return to the hospital by way of the emergency room.

One afternoon during that difficult time, I walked to pick up our son Adam from a friend’s house. The home was perfect, and when I thanked the mom for having Adam over to play, she flashed me a glossy smile. I couldn’t help but notice how shabby my little band was by comparison—I needed new jeans and Adam needed a haircut, there was a bleach spot on Sam’s sweatshirt, and Matthais’s pajamas hung open where a tube protruded from his belly. I stood on the driveway when we arrived home and allowed self-pity to wash over me. With my husband out of town and my boys too little to understand, I felt weighed down by the burden of it all. 

Adam interrupted my thoughts, riding up to me on his scooter. He said brightly, “Mom! There’s a poster in my school that says, ‘The race is not to the swift, but to the one that just keeps on running.’”

He pushed off again, circling the driveway. I became teary. To me, that day, a heaven-sent message came by way of my six-year-old: it doesn’t have to be beautiful. Just keep on going.

With time, the darkness gave way again to light. After another surgery, Matthias at last began to heal. One gray and chilly Friday afternoon in late November, we wedged three car seats in the back of our car and drove home, a family of five, never to stay in the hospital again. 

Little Matthias lost no time learning to crawl and walk and talk in rapid succession. Soon he was toddling around the house attempting to wrestle his big brothers to the floor, tossing dirt out of our house plants, and throwing valuables in the toilet. 

The doctors at the hospital would often ask us how Matthias’s cancer had been discovered so early, before he had even experienced any symptoms. Many cases of neuroblastoma go undetected until after it has spread, which dramatically reduces the chance of survival. Looking back, I could see the string of miracles: Our move to Payson. A sidewalk conversation with a new neighbor who said, “Oh, you have to go to Dr. Bennett!” The thorough exam that caught what Matthias’s earlier pediatricians had missed. 

Long before Matthias was sick, there were people building a hospital for children, there were doctors and donors, there were researchers in labs and professors at medical schools—all working together so that someday, if a little 4-month-old were to have cancer, he wouldn’t die, but live. 

Our Matthias is now a lanky 16-year-old with a driver’s license and a sense of humor. He has no memories of his battle with cancer, only a scar that runs from hip to hip across his stomach. From time to time, I think of—and live in my own way—this poignant verse from the Old Testament, “And it shall be when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, what is this? that thou shalt say unto him, by strength of hand the Lord brought us out from Egypt from the house of bondage” (Exodus 13:14). By strength of hand, the Lord delivered Matthias from cancer’s awful grip, and it was a miracle.