Positivity: Power of Prayer

From Watermelon Park, Florida:

Published: Saturday, January 19, 2008 11:33 PM EST

Pam Cribbs believes in the power of prayer. Last September, the 47-year-old mother of two was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer. Instead of sinking into depression, Cribbs pulled herself up by the bootstraps and decided to keep on living and let God handle the hard stuff.

“Throughout all of this I have had peace, I haven’t worried about it,” Cribbs said. “I wasn’t in control, God knew me before I was born, he knew this was going to happen.”

Two days before a camping trip in Stone Mountain, Ga., Cribbs decided to go to the doctor to check out some minor stomach pain she had been having.

“I didn’t think it was a big deal. I thought maybe I had a hernia or an ulcer,” Cribbs said. “Then the doctor started feeling my abdomen and said my liver was enlarged.”

By the end of the day, Cribbs was at Lake City Medical Center getting a Computerized tomography (CT) scan on her abdomen. The next day, Cribbs went back to the doctor who told her she had a mass on her pancreas and several on her liver.

She was then referred to a digestive disease specialist.

“I didn’t even want to think it was bad. They didn’t say it was cancer,” Cribbs said.

The digestive disease specialist was a little more nervous about the spots on Cribbs’ liver.

“He said the spots were innumerable and innumerable is not a good word,” Cribbs said.

The specialist suggested a biopsy and after the findings were observed by several pathologists and oncologists, Cribbs was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer.

The doctors told Cribbs the cancer was as bad as it gets.

“The doctors said I needed a miracle,” she said.

Asking the doctors how long she would live was never a question posed by Cribbs. For her, the doctors have no control on her life span, only God does.

“(The doctor) is not God. I believe that He is sovereign over all of it,” Cribbs said.

So Cribbs came up with a plan to keep herself healthy and keep life as normal for her kids as possible. Healthy eating, a positive attitude and a passionate belief that God would watch over her has given Cribbs an upbeat energy even as the chemotherapy brings her down.

She is bubbly and passionate, discussing her pre-teen children, D.J. and Callie, their artwork and homeschool lessons and the power of faith. The family are members of Hopeful Baptist Church. Cribbs’ father is a preacher in Tennessee. Without her faith, Cribbs said she would have probably fallen into a deep despair after the diagnosis.

“A lot of church family knew about it and they got prayer groups together to pray,” Cribbs said. “A lot of people still are.”

The thought that so many people have her health and family in their hearts and minds moves Cribbs to tears, especially since she has forgone praying for herself and has remained focused on her family.

“All throughout this I haven’t felt like praying for myself,” Cribbs said. “Everyone else has interceded for me and God has honored that.”

Cribbs said that when she prays, she prays for her husband and children and that they will have the strength to carry on and that God would comfort them if something did happen to her.

As Cribbs prepared herself for an uphill battle another less threatening but still dangerous diagnosis came through. Doctors had ruled out stage four pancreatic cancer, and Cribbs was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer.

Neuroendocrine cancer is a rare type of cancer which originates in the neuroendocrine system where the nervous and endocrine systems work together. The doctors told her that the diagnosis was better because they had a treatment plan they could treat the cancer with.

“This was the first miracle,” Cribbs said.

The procedure has Cribbs receiving six chemotherapy treatments. She goes for the treatments for a period of three days and then has two weeks off. Five of the six treatments have already been completed, Cribbs said.

The fourth treatment was completed just before Christmas.

Before the end of the year, and because of insurance constraints, Cribbs decided to get another CT scan to see how the chemotherapy was working on the cancer. A week after the scan, Cribbs went back to Gainesville to get some bloodwork done.

While waiting, a physician’s assistant told Cribbs and her husband, Rodney, that the tumors on her pancreas were gone and that except for some small lesions on her liver, the cancer was gone from there as well.

“It was nothing short of a miracle,” Cribbs said. “I said, ‘to God be the Glory,’ there is no way to explain it.”

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