Trials of Sundry Sorts

Thoughts on Surgery Day

Monday I got a call from my surgeon, Dr. Bahler. He works for I.U. Health and is leading a clinical trial, and he was calling to see if I wanted to be part of it.

I assumed it was to test something like how removal of the prostate affected the sex appeal of incredibly handsome men like myself. But it was not. Likely they could not find enough men with my kind of looks.

The trial is actually to test if infusing the patient with specific radioactive tracers beforehand helps the surgeons see and remove the cancer more completely (which would hopefully result in higher and longer remission rates in the patients). Here is the technical description for those interested:

This study is being done to compare how well Zopocianine (OTL78) in combination with Near InfraRed (NIR) fluorescent imaging may improve the detection of malignant (growing in an uncontrolled way) tissue in adult subjects undergoing prostatectomy and lymph node dissection for biopsy confirmed prostate cancer.

The use of both the Zopocianine (OTL78) and Zopocianine in combination with Near InfraRed (NIR) fluorescent imaging is investigational, meaning that it is not currently approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

We are asking you if you want to be in this study because you have been recently diagnosed with prostate cancer and scheduled to undergo a robotic prostatectomy with pelvic lymph node dissection.

I.U. is a research university, of course, so it makes sense that they run studies like these. I saw no reason to decline, so he handed me off to his associate, Ashley, who is in charge of coordination with the patients.

After a few phone calls everything was set up. Ashley did want to make sure my wife and I were not of child-bearing age, since they would be inserting radioactive elements in my body. I am sure Ashley had my age in front of her so I assume she wanted to make sure I had not ditched my first wife and taken up with a woman 30 years my junior. So I was tempted to say that my present wife was 25 just to see if I could pull off the joke, but didn’t want Ashley to mark my records “uber-creeper”. So I just assured Ashley that this would, in fact, not be an issue. No Franken-children would be born. Probably.

The infusion was yesterday afternoon. I already had a CT scan scheduled that morning, so all in all it made a really enjoyable day of driving around and getting poked and scanned.

I was told to meet Ashley at the Clinical Research Center at Simon Cancer Center in downtown Indy. She led me up to an older part of the hospital reserved for research. They did a ekg and then fed me an IV of a green liquid. After an hour or so I was good to go. Hopefully it will help Dr. Bahler get some good imaging.

When I got home I remembered that I had just received a nice letter informing me that I may have to serve jury duty soon. I’ve never done this before and am not eager to do so. But being a citizen has responsibilities, and this is one of them. So I may be part of a different kind of trial.

Which got me to thinking about that word, trial. Why do we use it for a medical study as well a judicial proceeding?

Well, both are concerned with testing something for the purpose of seeing the truth. In one case the testing is done using the scientific method. In the other the standards and practices of American jurisprudence. With each, truth is not assumed but sought.

Of course, the word trial has one other sense of usage: that of something painful and unpleasant that we must bear with. It is spiritually serendipitous, then, that in my devotional reading this week Francois Fenelon talked of trials and suffering and the indispensable role they play in the spiritual life. Fenelon was an odd and fascinating man. On the one hand he had high status and rank: he was an Archbishop in the Catholic Church, and also the tutor to the future King of France. On the other hand he was also a mystic of a sort, and emphasized an inner relationship with God over the outward forms of religion. He was censured by the Inquisition for this emphasis and spent his last years in obscurity and service.

But his words have been a great, great help to me over the past 20 years, and especially this week. I will end this post with some thoughts of his relating to how we are to bear the trials and troubles in our lives. And I will try to live them out today and in the weeks ahead.

HE WHO EXPECTS TO arrive at perfection, or a union of the soul with God, by means of consolation and comfort, will find himself mistaken. For, from the depravity of our nature, we must expect to suffer, and be in some measure purified, before we can be in any degree fitted for a union with God, or permitted to taste of the joy of his presence. Be ye patient, therefore, under all the sufferings which God is pleased to send you.

As soon as anything presents itself as a suffering, and you feel a repugnance against it, resign yourself immediately unto God with respect to it, giving yourself up to him in sacrifice; and you will find, that, when the cross arrives, it will not be so very burdensome, because you had disposed yourself to a willing reception of it.

If any other way but bearing the cross, and dying to his own will, could have redeemed man from that fallen and corrupt state, in which he is by nature, Christ would have taught it, and established it by his example. But of all that desire to follow him, he has required the bearing of the cross; and without exception has said to all, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt. 16:24). Why then do you fear to take up the cross?

To suffer, therefore, is your portion; and to suffer patiently, and willingly, is the great testimony of your love and allegiance to your Lord. Prepare then your spirit to suffer patiently the many inconveniences and troubles of this life; for these you will find, and can never avoid, though you run to the ends of the earth, or hide yourself in its deepest caverns; and it is patient suffering only that can either disarm their power, or heal the wounds they have made.

Having then no other desire but that of ardently reaching after him, of dwelling ever with him, and of sinking into nothingness before him, we should accept indiscriminately all his dispensations, whether obscurity or illumination, fruitfulness or barrenness, weakness or strength, sweetness or bitterness, temptations, wanderings, pain, weariness, or doubtings; and none of all these should retard our course.