Heard and Respected - Episode 167 - Health, Hope & Inspiration : City of Hope®

Heard and Respected – Episode 167

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Featuring: Tracy Hamilton

Published: June 8, 2019

The hosts of Health, Hope & Inspiration chat with Tracy Hamilton, a currently treating cancer patient who talks about how her journey with Stage IV ovarian cancer has taken her from hopelessness to a newfound faith in God—due in a large part to the spiritual support she received from others in the faith community.

Show Notes:

Ovarian cancer was the last imaginable thing on Tracy Hamilton’s mind when she went to her gynecologist for an ultrasound. “I actually had went in the previous Friday and been told I had, probably, fibroids. We went in there expecting nothing. And the doctor came in very solemn, and she said, ‘I am so sorry. I misdiagnosed you. You have ovarian cancer.’” Tests showed a cantaloupe-sized tumor on her right ovary, crushing her bladder and kidney. Hamilton went to see a gynecologic oncologist the next morning and had surgery the morning after. Subsequent surgeries and chemotherapy treatments seemed endless, and Hamilton felt like her prayers weren’t being heard. “I felt like, ‘Okay, I’m praying and praying and praying, and I don’t know if He’s hearing me.’”

In spite of the struggle, Hamilton pressed on. She says now it was a battle worth pursuing. “Ultimately, it matured my faith,” she says. A few years later, Hamilton had a recurrence of cancer, saying it had spread to her abdomen. “I was told I was going to receive palliative care,” she says. “I almost had that acceptance that maybe this is my end.” And then she spoke to some friends who convinced her that the battle wasn’t over; in fact, it wasn’t even hers. “They said, ‘Jesus healed the sick. And the Jesus that was back then and the Jesus now is the same Jesus.’ And I just had to believe that.”

Fast-forward to 2019, and Hamilton is still fighting the good fight of faith while undergoing medical treatment. She is part of a women’s prayer group who has been actively involved with her battle. But ask her about the support she received from CTCA, and she’ll tell you it made all the difference. “I feel respected. I feel like the team approach is really going on, and I am a participant. I’m not just the patient. I’m a team member, and we’re all working together to this goal of remission for me.”

Quotes:

“At first, I thought, ‘You have a chaplain here who wants to meet with me and talk about my faith and this and that?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, that’s different,’ because when you go to the hospital, you don’t expect that.”
“I went to my priest and said, ‘You know, I think Jesus is going to heal me.’ And he said, ‘Well, let’s pray for that.’ And one day I woke up with the realization, ‘Jesus is going to heal me.’ And He is healing me.”
“I am almost cancer-free. This, from being told in 2016 that I was going to be referred to palliative care and I had cancer over almost every organ in my body.”

Resources:

CLICK HERE to download this week’s resource: “Practical Needs of Cancer Patients”

Learn More:
CTCA | Tulsa, OK