Chuck Forbes

In November of 2016 Chuckwas complaining of pain in his abdomen.  It got to the point that we took him to the emergency room in Greenville, IL and after several tests they found what they thought was a perforated bowel.  They took him to Springfield to St. John's Hospital where he had a 6 hour surgery.  The surgeon found that he had an cyst the size of a baseball on his pancreas,  The pathology indicated that he had a bacterial infection.  However, Dr. Whitehurst one of the surgeons who took care of him was not satisfied that they had actually found the cause of everything going on.   At the beginning of April this year, Dr. Whitehurst's office called and said they had scheduled a special MRI to see how things were going in his stomach.  He found that  Chuck's pancreas was still inflamed.  He, the doctor, was not pleased with what he saw, so they arranged another MRI with contrast of Chuck's pancreas plus some special blood work.  They found his cancer markers were very high and that there was a mass in Chuck's pancreas.  We were referred to a GI specialist and a surgical oncologist.   It was decided that a biopsy needed to be done of the tumor, so on May 25th, Dr. Saliminejad performed an endoscopic ultrasound to get some better pictures of the tumor and a biopsy.

 The pathology determined that Chuck has Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma.  He will have surgery on Friday, June 9th to remove part of his pancreas and his spleen. 

At the beginning of 2016 Chuck was in the ICU for 35 days fighting for his life as a result of a Myasthenia Gravis set back.  On evening he was dreaming and he saw Jesus in a room sitting at a long table.  Chuck went in and sat down across from Jesus and said he was ready to go.  Jesus told him, he may be ready but Jesus was not ready for him.  We hold onto this promise and this is just another trial we have to endure.  We pray that Chuck will be with us for a long time.  We serve a Great God who loves us so much.