I have lived through two cancers and they are some of the best things that have ever happened to me. 

It’s not about the healing, but about getting the opportunity to experience God’s silver thread of grace, mercy and loving will in so much of my life. 

This is my story. 

Getting cancer: It’s just stats

The year was 2002, I was 36, a career man with a young family – our daughter was four.

My company’s health insurance provider has us all go for a chest X-ray at SATA. But I was called back to take a second, larger film X-ray because they saw something. This second X-ray showed a “clump of tortuous vessels” in my lung, according to the report. My wife and I were not convinced and sought a second opinion from a doctor friend. 

A scan showed that it was likely to be a malignant tumour. Things happened very quickly from that point and just four days later, I had the tumour removed together with the lower lobe of my left lung.

I should have been distraught, but my hospital pharmacy background allowed some objective distancing. In Singapore, one in four persons gets cancer by the age of 75. Someone had to make up that number, why not me? 

The cancer did affect me, of course. It crystallised what was important – my family, health, fitness, God. I started on a healthier diet, exercised more regularly, spent more time with my family.

But crucially, I was still driving my own life.

Not again?

Fast forward 12 years. I was asked to leave my job and was running a little business (not very successfully!). My career – what was left of it – was heading towards a swamp. 

My health was typical of a middle-aged man in a sedentary job: Struggling with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc. My wife and I decided that I should go back to that same doctor friend to manage those symptoms, instead of the government polyclinic.

The good doctor sent me for another scan – a coronary CT for my heart – so that he could tailor the medications to my requirement. My heart turned out to be in great shape, but they found “something” in my right lung. So, another referral, more scans and more doctor visits. The new surgeon decided to wait a bit in order to rule out other possible causes of the shadowy mass. 

After more scans and two years of monitoring with no changes in the “something”, it was decided that I was probably better off without that “something”.

I woke up from the operation to the news that the “something” turned out to be malignant and they had to take out another lobe. This was in 2016 – the day after my 50th birthday.

Why did God allow me to get cancer twice before 50?

The recovery following my second lobectomy was uneventful at first. Since it was performed through keyhole surgery, I recovered very much faster than after my first surgery.

I decided I was well enough after three weeks to join my old college friends for a long-planned holiday to Bali.

The trip was a blast and we had a wonderful time renewing old friendships. But alas, most of us caught the flu. My own symptoms didn’t start until after returning to Singapore. Imagine someone still recovering from a second lobectomy catching a bad flu. I could hardly breathe most of the time, my asthma was acting up, and every time I had a coughing fit, I would faint – literally. It’s something called cough syncope – feel free to Google it. 

My body was failing me and, in my frustration, I began to hate it. I started to ask questions about why God allowed me to get cancer twice before 50. Once was statistics; twice was personal. Why did God single me out? Was God punishing me for something? Was He testing me like Job? Was He refining me through this fire? What? What? 

God was silent. His silence made my questions echo louder, but there were no answers. That spiral was angled downwards and eventually brought me into depression, right down to the bottom. 

The return of the Prodigal Son

The apartment complex we were living in had just been sold en bloc and we had to pack up to get ready to move out. One of the first items to be boxed was our book collection, and that’s when I chanced upon Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son. Something compelled me to set it aside instead of boxing it with the rest of the books. I started reading it at the first opportunity. 

Luke (and Nouwen) records the story of the Prodigal Son in chapter 15 of his Gospel. The prodigal had to find himself feeding pigs in the muck (at rock bottom) in order to “come to his senses”. He had to give up on himself, return to his father on his knees and throw himself at his father’s mercy. It was only then that he found himself redeemed. 

I had to do the same. There were no other doors or windows open. I had to wave the white flag and give up on myself and my questions. I had to be broken – like a wild stallion needs to be broken before he can be ridden. Sometimes for thick-headed coconuts like myself, that’s the only way.

The big picture of God’s hand in my life

We’ve heard it many times before: “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life”. Fact is, to someone in the middle of a crisis, this pronouncement rings hollow. It’s better to say nothing and just be there. 

But hindsight brings clarity.

I did say earlier that I was a pharmacist. Some of that time was spent in an oncology setting. I now count that as the beginning of a long journey. 

About three months before my first lobectomy, something prompted me to get back into shape. I was getting pudgy and sorely lacking in exercise. I started hitting the gym faithfully three times every week. Lo and behold, those gym sessions were brought to bear just months later. A bed had been booked for me in the ICU post-op and that was where my dear wife waited, but I never showed. After a few frantic checks she finally found me in a normal ward. Apparently, my vitals were good enough to avoid the ICU.

After my second lobectomy, my surgeon said to me thrice – when I first woke up, when he saw me after my transfer to a normal ward, and during my first follow up in his clinic – that I survived a five-hour operation on half a lung (I had half of my left lung left at that time, and the right was immobilised for the op). For an experienced surgeon to be surprised by this was telling. 

Giving up in the pigsty redeemed me. But God saved my restoration for years later.

It was after COVID that my wife and I decided – while we could still walk – to join the pilgrimage to Israel that our church was organising. So, in November 2022, we went. Little did we know that our trip would be one of the last pilgrimages to Israel before the window closed in October 2023 on account of the Gaza war. 

Carl with his wife at the Mount of Olives during their pilgrimage to Israel in 2022. It was during this trip that he encountered God.

Anyway, we were at the Church of the Primary of St Peter, on the shores of Galilee, the purported site of Jesus’ restoration of Peter. Our Pastor gave a short homily of how Peter was restored gently and commissioned to “feed my sheep”.

I couldn’t help my tears which gushed long and hard. It felt like scales had been peeled from my heart – everything became clear suddenly. 

Let me backtrack a little: After I came out of depression, I spent many hours wondering why there was no one to talk to who could really understand what I went through. One couldn’t talk about religion in the many support groups organised by hospitals or cancer organisations – which was weird because the thing that cancer patients worry about most is death, and that is the very thing religion deals with.

One night, lying in bed, it came to me: To start our own cancer support group in church. We had a new Pastor at that time, and we happened to have a conversation. As it turned out, she too was a cancer survivor and had the same call to start a cancer support group. So, we did.

Fast forward: The Pastor was called to the mission field in Timor Leste, COVID hit, and the cancer support group took a hiatus. 

I restarted the group just before the Holy Land trip and God used that trip to restore me and renew His call. His restoration was gentle and also in three parts: One, He pulled me out of depression. Two, He gave me meaning and a job to do and three, He confirmed the job and showed me my flock.

Carl (in grey) with some members of his Cancer Support Planning Team at a retreat this year. This is the ministry God led him to start in his church.

I could have avoided a lot of heartache, but I chose to control my own life and got frustrated when I couldn’t. The only One in control is God, for everyone else it’s just an illusion. The Teacher writes in Ecclesiastes 12 that “all is vanity” and declares: “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind.”

I could finally see God’s hand in so much of my life. I don’t believe that getting cancer, even twice, is part of God’s will for me. We live in a fallen and broken world where there is much evil and sickness and suffering.

But God can turn whatever we are going through to our advantage: “All things work together for good to those who love God” (Romans 8:28), if we let Him.

This is a condensed version of Carl’s book. His complete story is available here for those who would like to read it in full.

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