Posted by ChiTownRadio.com on May 06, 2008 at 12:29:31:
Starting today, Sun-Times sports reporter and columnist Lacy J. Banks will be writing a blog about what he's going through as he fights three life-threatening illnesses. Look for it online at Blogs.suntimes.com/banks.
Lacy J. Banks, 64, has been a Sun-Times sportswriter/columnist for 35 years and a Baptist preacher for 55 years. He has preached at more than 100 churches in the Chicago area. A native of Lyon, Miss., Banks graduated from the University of Kansas with a B.A. in French and served three years in the Vietnam War as an officer in the Navy. Lacy and his wife, Joyce, have been married 39 years and have three daughters and five grandchildren. Among beats Banks has covered for the Sun-Times: the Bulls, the Fire, the now-defunct Sting, the Blackhawks, the Wolves, the Cubs, the now-defunct Hustle, the Rush, the Sky, college football, college basketball and pro boxing.
Welcome to the story of the adventure of the healing process that I am undergoing.
My blog will take you with me as I go from serious sickness to, I hope, miraculous recovery, by the grace of God and the aid of God-gifted doctors and nurses.
First, let me describe our outbound point of origin. Last month, destiny dealt me a triple dose of trauma. Doctors at the University of Chicago and Northwestern hospitals examined me over a two-week span and diagnosed three big problems:
• • Brain cancer, which might require surgery.
• • End-stage congestive heart failure, which definitely requires a heart transplant.
• • Prostate cancer, which also definitely requires surgery.
Any one of these diagnoses is enough to drape a man with doom and gloom. But the Lord has seen fit to visit me with all three.
I am a 64-year-old black man, a Sun-Times reporter for 35 years, a Baptist preacher for 55 years.
I have a family history of congestive heart failure, which killed my oldest and youngest siblings, my father and an aunt, and of prostate cancer, which killed three uncles.
Now, it's my turn to tangle with both of those terrors, and brain cancer, too.
Each diagnosis hit me like a proverbial ton of bricks, drove me to my knees in prayer, made me tell my wife and children, to their despair, and motivated me to surf the Internet and question doctors to see what information they could share.
Many doctors prefer that their patients be simple, silent and totally surrendered to whatsoever they suggest.
But it's my life at stake. I already underwent a cardiac triple-bypass in 2001 -- when I was sawed open, had three ribs broken and had a plastic surgeon fail to stabilize my sternum, or breast bone, with experimental titanium plates. The latter required me to undergo a subsequent serious surgery three months later to have the plates replaced with the standard steel sutures.
Since then, I have been determined to make sure I communicate more closely with my doctors, ask as many questions as possible, talk to as many patients as possible and get as much published information as possible to enable me to know exactly what it is that doctors say I have, what options are available, how they compare in effecting a cure -- and how much time do I have for ME to make the decision as to what will be done.
In other words, I have promoted myself to being CEO, as best I can, of my medical dream team, where, first and foremost, God is my primary-care physician.
I invite your feedback after each posting. I am most eager to hear from people who have recovered from similar medical issues, or are still dealing with them, or are caregivers for someone else who has dealt with them.
I cordially invite you all to watch God heal me.
Right now, I actually feel good. I take 10 different pills a day, run at least a mile on my treadmill, eat responsibly, don't do anything strenuous and get plenty of prayer and rest as I also schedule the surgeries that I feel are in my best interests -- unless God postpones them with a cataclysmic healing.
It's going to be one of the strangest, most exciting and -- I hope -- enlightening tales you'll ever read.