The Cancer Chronicles: Rounds 3 and 4 and 5--Bouncing Along

 

There's something very different about singing Luther's "A Mighty Fortress" when you have cancer.

A mighty fortress is our God
A bulwark never failing.
Our helper He, amid the flood
Of mortal ills prevailing.

I've never really pondered the words "mortal ills" before. They're just a normal part of the song, washing on by like so many other lyrics. They lack the umamic punch of a meaty word like "bulwark." But mortal means subject to death, and ill meant "evil" or "offence" long before it had anything to do with physical health. In short, you're singing about all the evils man is subject to since the Fall, up to and including the primary one--Death.

One of the best tactics the Devil has found in modern America is getting all of us to pretend Death is unusual. Granted, we have reasons for the conceit. Child mortality is nearly gone, and people are managing to stretch average life expectancy into the eighties these days. I have seen articles straight-facedly asserting that sixty-something men were "carried off far too young" and "unexpectedly." 

Balderdash. I'm 35. Alexander had conquered the world and died by my age. If anything, rather than being carried off "unexpectedly" my obit should note how much time I wasted compared to many great men of the past. (For instance, in retrospect, spending four years working at Chick-fil-A was not the best career path.) Cancer doesn't really care how much time you have "on average." Remember, half of all averages are low.

For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe.

His craft and power are great, and armed with cruel hate,

On earth is not his equal.

Death and the Devil both prowl about like a roaring lion, seeking whom they may devour. And unlike the Devil, Death always manages to sniff out and find every single one of us. In Adam, we all die. Have you thought about where and when and how you'd like to do that lately?

Cancer means I can't pretend to be immortal here on this earth. Mortal ills, the Devil, and Death are all hunting me every time I manage to wake up. It's a very different way to live life--but I think it's a better way. That's not to say I don't still get overwhelmed with the rhythm of grading and teaching and kissing my wife and mowing my (mostly weedy) grass...but it's a lot harder than it used to be. The world is a starker, more hopeful place when you have cancer and you're a Calvinist.

And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us

We will not fear, for God hath willed his Truth to triumph through us.

The Prince of Darkness Grim--we tremble not for him!

His rage we can endure, for lo! His doom is sure,

One little word shall fell him.

It is amazing what prayer can do. I know people all over this nation (shoot, maybe this globe!) are praying for me, and I can feel the difference it makes. I'm heading into round six of chemo, and the side effects are staying minimal--mostly wearing off a week after treatment. I still have all my hair. The last time my oncologist walked into her office, she said, "My, you don't even look like you're on chemo!" (For which I thank God first, and all my prayer warriors second). So far, fatigue remains my primary symptom, though the hiccups continue when I'm on the meds, and I have some minor neuropathy (that's nerve tingles for you common folk) in my hands when I touch cold stuff. This means that grating cheese for my wife has now become a heroic action, because the cheese block feels electrified. (You other husbands wish you had my opportunities for impressing your girl!) So I keep bouncing along; tired one weekend, mostly normal the next.

Keep those prayers up. I have (hopefully) one more round of chemo, and then another colonoscopy to see how things look. Then, probably on to radiation, which I am told will be a whole different sort of fun. I'm pleased that the schedule has worked out nicely so that I should be in fairly good shape during Thanksgiving between ending chemo and beginning radiation, because even cancer cannot keep me away from a large pile of mashed potatoes. It will be easy to be thankful this November.

I remain very grateful also for all the continual offers of help my community and family keep showering us with. Rest assured, if we need you, we'll ask, but God has been kind thus far with my continued ability to work and earn a living. Samaritan Ministries continues to help with our financials, and we can still pay all the bills. We pray that continues going forward into radiation. You're welcome to join us. For after all...

That word above all earthly powers

No thanks to them abideth,

The Spirit and the gifts are ours

Through Him, who with us sideth!

Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also,

The body they may kill

God's Truth abideth still--

His kingdom is forever!

Amen.

The Cancer Chronicles: Rounds 1 & 2--Hiccups and Hesitations

Since everybody keeps asking how I'm doing, perhaps I should tell you. It is a principle of long standing to give the people what they want, even if talking about yourself can get old or embarrassing quickly. 

(I'm kidding. I'm a teacher. Telling stories on myself is one of my favorite tools.)

Sanballat, Sanballating

First, let me thank everyone who keeps telling me that they've been praying. I try to tell everyone that regardless, but it remains true if I missed you! There is nothing better than thundering at the gates of heaven, and it's even better if you don't have to do all the thundering yourself. Saves a ton of wear and tear on the knees.

Second, a little background.

A Little Background

My doctor and I had been trying to figure out what was going on with my digestion for months. I felt fine, but I kept bleeding. He was perplexed because I was thirty-five, healthy, and had no family history of cancer. [Not true, as it turned out. One of my great-grandparents apparently had colon cancer. You find out many interesting things about about your family as time rolls on and the right conversations happen.] 

So it couldn't be that. But he thought we ought to schedule a colonoscopy just to make sure.

So I contacted the absolutely splendid Veritas Surgery here in Moscow: a "direct-pay surgery group" that cuts out all the ridiculous insurance craziness of our modern healthcare system, and they got me in within three weeks. The doctor said there was something that didn't look healthy, but we'd wait on the biopsy.

Then he actually took the time, while out of town, to call us and deliver the news personally. Then he prayed for us, then and there. It was the best way we could have started a very wild ride. 

That was in mid-July, and we were ramping up for the upcoming school year and going to rehearsals for a musical show I performed in. We didn't tell anyone just yet--we wanted to see how bad things would be. Then came all the scans. PET scans. CT scans. MRI scans. I got injected with something radioactive at some point and did not develop superpowers. (Yet.)

The news was good, for cancer. The tumor has a good chance of responding well to treatment, and the cancer hasn't spread to anywhere else. The bad news was it was too far along to simply cut out. So the preferred option (said my heavily Hispanic oncologist) is chemotherapy. See if we can shrink old Sanballat right down to nothing. Or at least enough to chop out with a robotic knife.

Chemo

So what does chemo actually look like? Opening shot: cheerful high school teacher and absolutely amazing, hot, caring wife enter car. Following shot: A drive down to Lewiston and St. Joe's Cancer Center, forty minutes away. The usual meeting with the nurses. Blood pressure. Height. Weight. (Rectal cancer is great for the waistline, by the way. I haven't been this skinny since I got married!) Check in with the doctor. And then you enter The Room.

Well, I call it that. It's a large room with ten or twelve comfy, slate-grey chairs, with enough room by each for an IV rack and a companion chair. Most of the occupants of the chairs are in their sixties or seventies; frail, wispy people who mostly sleep as life-prolonging poison drips into their veins.

The nurses prep you with a bag full of saline. They plug it into my chest (I got a fancy port installed under my skin so that they don't have to find a vein every round, which means I am now technically a cyborg. Booyah!) and wait. Draining that takes about forty-five minutes. I can taste it in the back of my throat when they start, and for your information, it tastes terrible. Somebody invent some tastier salt water, please.

Meanwhile the pharmacologist mixes up my specific dose of the day, checked and triple-checked by the chatty nurses. Then they plug that in, and for two hours I am free to read in my chair, while my wife sits beside me grading papers on the center wi-fi or makes a CostCo run. So far I have knocked out an A.A. Milne murder mystery (who knew Winnie-the-Pooh's creator wrote those?) and most of an overview on the political theory of the Middle Ages. The number of books I read this year might break the record. Meanwhile, various chemicals continue to drip. I am told this particular combo is so popular it has its own acronym: FOLFOX. It sounds like a bad country cover band, or a sixties missile silo.

Finally, you beep. But you are not done! No, dear reader, not content with poisoning you for two hours, they hook you up to a wearable pump, powered by your very body heat, that you wear around in a fanny pack for two more days. (That sounds really gross when I type it out like that...)

Then you return to The Room, where they make sure you haven't suffered anything too alarming, unplug you, and set you free for another eleven days until you do it all over again. Takes about half an hour, tops.

Hiccups

Now, while you are being actively poisoned, you are--follow me closely here--poisonous. So they have to put you on more nausea drugs to counteract the other drugs eating into your intestinal lining. And the most common side effect of those drugs thus far has been...hiccups.

Now, I'm not talking the usual, five-minutes-and-done hiccups. These are Dopey-the-Dwarf level hiccups; Chinese-human-wave-attacks-in-North-Korea-1950 hiccups, should-have-been-one-of-the-plagues-upon-Egypt hiccups, squeaking their way out of my diaphragm once every eight seconds for an hour or two at a time. It makes teaching...interesting.

I have always found hiccups oddly funny. God appears to want to test my endurance of that viewpoint.

But actually, other than that, most symptoms from that long, scary list they shove under your nose haven't showed up yet. Some minor sensitivity about the mouth--rather like you've burned your mouth but for a week at a time. Oh, and when I drink cold drinks it feels like a swallowed a cupful of porcupine. Those of you who know how much I love ice water will know what a sacrifice this involves.

Hesitations

Round II (which I finished last Friday) knocked me out rather more than Round I. I expect that trend to continue. But not knowing exactly what health challenge is coming next does make planning for the future...difficult. What will Christmas look like? Semester finals? Will I have hair? An appetite? Should I try to take on more work while I still can...or try to streamline what is already working? 

The prayers and well-wishes help. Calvinism helps. The psalms help more. "Cancer is a word, not a sentence," as British journalist John Diamond said. 

Pray that I keep pushing through it all. Pray that the side effects stay minimal. Pray for my lovely wife, who has to put up with me being a cross between a zombie and a cyborg. And pray that the next ten rounds go quickly. Those hiccups get old quick.

On to Round Three.

As a Dying Man to Dying Men

 

It's amazing how much of life we simply take for granted.

Think about the last time you got sick. Did you want anything so much as to be healthy again, or at the very least "not sick"? (This is so universally human, Aristotle used this exact scenario to distinguish various kinds of pleasures in the Nicomachean Ethics over 2000 years ago.) We take the ability to eat what we like, go where we want, breathe, sleep, even move as something that will always be there. We're Americans, after all. Isn't that our birthright?

God, a consuming fire, has to break us out of that complacency so often. 

"...because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away. For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth"

The tool He appears to be using to remind me of that truth is, oddly, cancer.

I say "oddly" in that I'm thirty-five, in relatively good health, and descended from relatively healthy people. All my grandparents are in their nineties, no cancer. Cancer isn't really supposed to be in my ballpark. But about a month ago we found out that I do indeed have rectal cancer.

Everybody immediately wants to know the stage. I actually don't know, because my oncologist has refused to tell me! ;-) But the tumor (I tend to call it Sanballat) is too big to operate on, so chemotherapy is our next move to try to shrink him down to mini-Sanballat-size. I start this Wednesday. If you notice all my hair falling out in the next few weeks, don't worry--my students aren't that bad! Thus far, the bad news. But there are hopeful signs as well--it hasn't spread to other organs, the tumor seems to be solitary for the moment, and this treatment often works great (check the prayer request list lower down for some specifics). All that to say, don't send me any teary farewell letters yet. God's not done with me...as far as I know. 

Needless to say, the last month has been quite a learning curve--scans, and appointments, and doctors, and appointments, and bills, and appointments--filled with enough "possible side effects" to make your hair stand on end (while I still have hair). If I've dropped any responsibilities to any of you during that period, my apologies. I've had three different scans, four blood tests, a 24-hr pee test (that was interesting), two knocked-out operations, and I've collected a significant number of meds to deal with the side effects of my other meds that enhance my main meds. So many orange plastic jars. By next week, I should be able to tell you quite a lot about the modern chemo experience. My guess is that it will center around various flavors of nausea, but we'll see. Tony Esolen's Substack (which you should subscribe to immediately) noted today that "potion" and "poison" come from the exact same root; doctors have been trying to poison people "just enough" for quite a long time. It's nice to know I'm traditional.

Our family has been nothing but supportive, and they and our church family are absolutely bombarding heaven with prayers. Given the unpredictability of cancer, that is the best thing you can do right now. Here are some specific ones:

• That all the possible (terrible) side effects would be kept to a minimum.
• That Molly would have the stamina and joy to put up with me--because let's face it, I'm rather a grouch without cancer and chemo in the mix. In fact, pray for her twice.
• That treatment would be sufficient to get rid of the tumor entirely without surgery. That can apparently happen in about 30% of cases. If we get to surgery, my chances of having a colostomy bag the rest of my life spike enormously and I would really rather...not.
• That I can serve my 136 Logos Online high-school students well with a chemo brain. Grading papers already feels like being tied to a chair and being slowly poisoned; I hope I can continue to do that well when that is no longer a metaphor! Scheduling classes around chemo sessions is also going to be less than ideal, so pray for everybody involved that we can keep education actually happening.

This does mean that our adoption process is on hold for the next eight months or so, and we might have to spend some of that money y'all so kindly gave us on keeping me alive instead. Prerequisites, you know? But we'll be sure to keep all of you in the loop if we win through this and start back up.

Molly and I are doing well so far--trusting God for the unknowns, and trying to laugh about the knowns. As I remarked to her shortly after the diagnosis: "So this means that we have no idea how long I'm going to live, or what's going to happen next. Rather like...every day, actually." It's rather comforting to have a God big enough to manage Providence down to the details of which cells are growing in places they shouldn't. The money is holding out for the moment, and we promise to let y'all know if other needs jump to the fore. 

As for me, meditating on mortality over the last month has discovered a marked taste for poetry and the familiar--reading George Herbert and Alexander Pope and Winne the Pooh and Sherlock Holmes instead of worrying about the latest Twitter squabble or playing a computer game. When you've found out what might kill you, worrying about how the Jews might be controlling the economy gets even sillier and more useless than it was already. I challenge you all, in fact, to take a moment and ponder what you would do over the next week if you did get that phone call saying you had cancer. If you were a dying man, would you change anything?

Well, one dying man to another, you actually are. God alone knows when he's calling you home, or how. So choose...wisely. Don't take life for granted. After all, it's a gift.

A Goode Summer Novel List

[Editor's note: this was intended to be published at the beginning of June, as summer actually dawned. It was not. We have fired those responsible and sent them to various horrible punishments, and trust that such mistakes will occur less frequently at this publication going forward.]

Summer, in educational circles, is the time to kick back and actually read something for fun. For most of us, that means a good novel. Bonus points if it is a novel novel that we haven't read before! There's nothing like dropping into a new world as a first-time visitor. Of course, this is risky, because that world might blow up in your face, so it's helpful to have a guide in the world of words--a Virgil to guide us out of the stacks of pages (that were formerly woods). 

So permit me to shove a few novels towards you with a hopeful expression on my face. I've organized them in fives: my top five novels of all time, five fun romps, and five relative unknowns. If you haven't read one of these, there's no moment like the present!

Wait, I Say, On the Lord

 

Psalm 27:14: Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD. 

Mankind has always feared the unknown, the delayed, darkness, and danger; our fears lurk in such places. But LORD, you are our light and salvation; so whom shall we fear? Only you. And so we come to you, yet again, with petitions and prayers that must be brought into the light, lest they rot our hearts in the darkness.

Summer is a time of Grace Agenda preparations. It is no small task to educate and feed a small army, so be with those who plan—that they may be strong and forget nothing.

Summer is a time of travel, and travel can be dangerous. We pray for safety for our brothers and sisters on the road.

Summer is a time of weddings, which bring unique temptations to our many engaged couples. Keep them chaste and focused on serving others, not themselves.

Summer is a time of activity, which means those sick and damaged can feel their pain more. You have made our bodies your tabernacle, and told us to desire one thing:  to dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of our life, to behold the beauty of the LORD. Heal our sick, and do not let their sickness define them. In particular this week we name Barbera, Bekah, Amy, and Tammy.

Summer can be a time of hot opposition from our enemies. We pray for those on the front lines of our spiritual war: Christians in the Sudan, the Madsen family in Zambia, Pastor Toby in Ireland. For we had fainted, unless we had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Do not let them faint.

All of which we ask in your son’s name, Amen

King's Cross Petitions, June 7th, A.D. 2026

Favorite Student Blunders and Bloopers: 2024-2026

 It's that time of year again, time to revel in the hilarious misspelling, malapropism, or just plain goof. If you recognize your work here, know that my respect for you remains high, but you did give me a chuckle--a chuckle I want to share with others. 

(Since I apparently never posted last year's bloopers, they are included here as well!)

A.D. 2024-25

“Princess Diana of Whales is the best person my Aunt Mary can be compared to.”

“You are most defiantly going to need to know how to write well during your classes.”

“Beast your eyes on the water which is plummeting down on the mountain!”

“Love God, He will life you up; deny Him, He will cast you down.”

“The background knowledge on the Iliad (like Paris and Helen's story, the gods, and the Treaty of Versailles) is very helpful.”

What three creatures does Socrates “model” and compare the tripartite nature of man to in Book IX? “The Lion, which is the passion, the man, which is the ration, and the multiheaded beast, which is the animation.”

What was Aesop’s social class? “Aesop was thought to be a salve.”

“If a man’s animal nature takes over, Plato might call him greedy or glutinous; lazy or undisciplined.”

“Fear, honnor and intersections were the 3 reason thucydided said a nation went to war.”

“God promised that David would have a descendent on the thrown forever.”

Thrasymachus’ definition of justice: “It was the advantage of the stronger or might makes write.”

“Thucydides said Athens had a strong navel.”

“This being a fun story, I figured I'd retell it just as it is. I wanted it kind of like a pudding for thought: not too potent but enough to keep the reader entertained and feeling better after the read.”

“During the Fenaissance, people began to experiment with the flute.”

“Lucretius did not believe in a diving power ruling over the world.”

“Christianity didn’t completely ride the world of warfare, but it changed the terms and promoted a better way of life.”

A.D. 2025-26

“Christmas should not be celebrated in corporeal worship.”

“Individuals who are not capable of repeating should not be baptized.”

“I call to the people to not give up and coward away but to get up and fight. For if we coward away we are also giving up not just the fight but this nation.”

“Arius believed in the creation of the sun.”

What was at stake in the medieval “Investiture Conflict” from the 1100-1200s? “In the medieval times of 1100-1200s, the problem of “Investiture Conflict” was around.”

“Arius and his followers believed there was a time when the Son of God was naught.”

“As the light trickled in through a small window, Boethius’ fate sat upon his mind like a gamer on his mom’s couch.”

“All humans encounter leadership in their lives: weather in the family; a father leading the wife and children, or perhaps the older child leading the younger ones.”

“It could be anything from Christians and the story of the crucifiction, to how Aeneas founded Britain.”

“A biproduct of this lack of Christian values in public school, has opened up many temptations for kids.”

“The principals America was founded on will carry her to the moon.”

“I do think that our education is better than what the medevils had and if they saw us they would be green with envy.”

“Education now has lost a little of its meaning and talent is forced into a uniform box till disheartened, insert buff dog meme, old english literature, I am a tale of knights and dragons still read 800 years later.” (Editor's note--???)

“The Pax Romana allowed Jesus to be born into a stable world.”

“Marcus Aurelias followed Stoichsism.”

What was the 1st Triumvirate? “The three big cheeses of 60 B.C.”

In a single essay, a student spelled “medieval” four different ways: “medeval,” “medevil,” “midevial,” and “midvial.” (He never did get it right.)

In Which I Indulge in a Smidge of Literary Criticism

 So there I was, on a lazy Sunday afternoon, absent-mindedly browsing a book of The Top 500 Poems when after Poe's "To Helen" I come across an editor's note. And it was a rather puzzling editor's note.

 To really get the full flavor of the thing, you'll need the poem. Here it is:

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand,
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!

And here is the note that so perplexed me afterward:

"The classical trappings are both allusive and elusive, as though the poet preferred suggestion to assertion. Nobody has explained "Nicean"; "Naiad" and "Psyche" remain indeterminate. The poem is, nevertheless, a gem."

Surely the editor cannot mean that no one has a good explanation for what Poe is referring to in those lines? It looks like a pretty straightforward Odysseus reference to me--who else can be the "weary, way-worn wanderer" coming home by ship to a long-awaited love? Then Poe crosspollinates it with the myth of Cupid and Psyche with the lamp (in some versions of the myth Psyche is forced to freeze for a bit after looking on Cupid, so she can't chase him--thus "statue-like"). Psyche is, of course, the soul emerging from the library (where all the aforementioned classics of Rome and Greece reside) which any book-lover would know is "Holy Land." And a Naiad is a water-spirit that can (a la the Sirens/mermaids) be very attractive to men and lure them into the ocean--here, the classics, where his lady-love has inspired Poe to dwell in pure Romantic fashion.

As for "Nicean" (the toughest one) Poe might simply be under the impression that the isle of the Phaeacians, Scheria, where Odysseus caught a ride is near real-life Nicea (though it's traditional identification with Corfu is a long way from there, so that seems odd). Or maybe, like many poets throughout the ages, he needed a cool-sounding word that fit the meter!

There you go. Figured it all out. Somebody pay me.

Commonplaces: 1st QTR A.D. 2026

"Vos orate Dominum, ut quod voce hominis infertur auribus vestris, idipsum digito dei vestris inscribatur cordibus." (Pray to the Lord, that these words, by which man’s voice is brought to your ears, may by the finger of God be written in your hearts.)—Henry Bullinger, Decades I.5

“I am not, of course, maintaining that theology, even before you believe it, is totally bare of aesthetic value. But I do not find it superior in this respect to most of its rivals. Consider for a few moments the enormous aesthetic claim of its chief contemporary rival—what we may loosely call the scientific outlook, the picture of Mr. H.G. Wells and the rest. Supposing this to be a myth, is it not one of the finest myths which human imagination has yet produced? The play is preceded by the most austere of all preludes: the infinite void, and matter restlessly moving to bring forth it knows not what. Then, by the millionth millionth chance—what tragic irony—the conditions at one point of space and time bubble up into that tiny fermentation which is the beginning of life. Everything seems to be against the infant hero of our drama—just as everything seems to against the youngest son or ill-used stepdaughter at the opening of a fairy tale. But life somehow wins through. With infinite suffering, against all but insuperable obstacles, it spreads, it breeds, it complicates itself, from the amoeba up to the plant, up to the reptile, up to the mammal. We glanced briefly at the age of monsters.

ADMMXXV Retrospective

Favorite neighbors...

And so we bid farewell to the Year of Our Lord 2025. For the Goode household, it was a good year. God gave us many things; all of them helpful, virtually all of them positive. This year was like a good friend telling stories over dinner--often familiar, always enjoyable, and occasionally coming up with something you really didn't expect even after all this time. 

(I somehow took not a single sunset/sunrise photo this year, so instead of the customary burning atmosphere, you get the local ducks. Sorry. I shall do better in 2026.)

Schlepping the Shelf: December 2025

 

As we hook 2025 up to life support and gather quietly (or not so quietly) round its bedside, waiting for the phoenix of '26 to rise from the ashes, it's good to ponder what really made an impact this year. 

Of course, if you have any right to call yourself an educated man, some of that impact will be books. Books were the first long-distance communication, and they still remain one of the few that can allow you to commune with the dead, at least without involving the Witch of Endor and a few sleazy devils. So here are some of my favorite semi-seances of the last six months, with both the living and the dead.

Finished

Authorized: The Use and Misuse of the KJV Bible by Mark Ward. A good overall look at why the KJV can no longer be the only (and he would say, even primary) Bible translation. While I agree with his overall point, I would locate the cause not in inevitable “language change” where he does, but in the massive dumbing-down of our education--somehow ploughboys in 1885 didn’t have any trouble with the KJV. When I posted this as a tweet, Canon Press reposted it (since I listened to it on Canon+) and got me into my first, and only, Twitter spat. Mostly it proved that X users can't read.