Dear friends,

I pray that all is well for each of you and you have had a blessed beginning to 2022!

These last three months have been challenging yet good. I have had to battle impatience and discouragement at the slow pace of recovery, while dealing with ongoing side effects of the diagnosis. I have also had to battle the peculiar feeling of being so dependent upon the intercession, love, and support of others after having long taken too much pride in my ability to work hard and be a successful student, scholar, and professional. Loved ones around me have been encouraging me that my continued fight for life and recovery is of invaluable encouragement to them and is especially important for my family. 

Thus I do keep asking God for strength and healing, and I choose to keep on fighting the fight, which now is also a fight of patient endurance.

Yet I do have so much to be thankful for! I was told a year ago in December that the average life expectancy for the diagnosis was 12 months. However, in my last visit, my oncologist said I was looking better than I have since he's met me. I am alive, gaining strength, and doing great. The tumor has been stable since January a year ago. For Thanksgiving 2020, I could only manage to eat some sweet potato puree because of the severely constricted duodenum. This Thanksgiving, as a result of the gastric bypass surgery, I was able to chew and savor most dishes on the table. What an amazing gift of God!

A contact in the medical profession recently said that my life is proof that there is a God. I am grateful that God is bringing blessing through this trial.

I have had several adventures over these last three months, including getting COVID-19 at the end of November. God healed me of that. I had four GJ feeding tube changes in five weeks at one point. I have had more frequent biliary drain changes. The side effects of radiation were to keep appearing for six months following the radiation treatment last May and June. Indeed, many of the symptoms I fight may have also been exacerbated by radiation, including some tissue thickening in the abdomen. 

I appreciate your ongoing prayer, support, and encouragement in this journey. May God encourage and bless each one of you!

I had learned that several of you were disappointed to find you have mistakenly donated to Caringbridge thinking that donations were going to support me in this battle. Caringbridge does not send any donated funds or proceeds from tributes on to the people who have stories on the site. All funds the site receives are retained by Caringbridge. While many of you did donate to Caringbridge in order to fund the website, such donations are now sufficient to fund my page on the site for many years to come. However, others donated on the basis of a misunderstanding of how Caringbridge used such donations.

I was able to contact their customer service to ask if there was any solution to such donations given on the basis of misunderstanding about where the funds would go. 

Caringbridge said donors who did not intend that their donations would go 100% to the site could call or email them to ask for a refund.  The Caringbridge customer service number is +1 651-452-7940 and the email is customercare@caringbridge.org. I did obtain permission from Customer Care to post this information in my journal on this site. 

I hope this information can help for those of you who felt misled by how Caringbridge would use donations. 

For those who would prefer to follow my journal without constant fundraising ads, you may do so at https://timisanovercomer.blogspot.com/

I am deeply grateful for all of you who have been part of my journey. 

God continues to encourage me with his promises:

I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord. -Psalm 118:17 

The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. -Galatians 2:20b

May each of you be blessed and encouraged in every aspect of life!

Blessings and love,

Tim