Our youngest child, John Patrick Agustine Verly, is now 21. Nine months ago John discovered that he has a very rare type of brain cancer! As he lay in the hospital in St Paul - St Josephs... a priest friend of our son in law, Joe, came to anniont him. We were scared and in shock after a horrific brain surgery had been suggested to us to go in and find out what it was that was in his brain on the scans! We had to have a second opinion and in no way could allow such a thing! Later but still without a diagnosis we were at Mayo and John was very sick as they had taken him off steroids to allow the cancer to grow again... We were once again on the brink of brain surgery... a biopsy, but this time we had two options either go through the back of his brain and go for a small area that was there or go through the top of his head through the center of his brain and to a larger area... this was a much more critical and scarey surgery with long term damage to John or even death! We had to choose the safest knowing that they might not get an answer there. Fr Craig Timmerman was there the day before the surgery and beautifully annointed John in his bed... John does not have much memory of this other than pictures that I took at the time.... His sister Susan and Little Sister Benedict arrived just as the annionting was beginning and took part. All gathered around John's bed.... With my work with hospice I have been to some powerful annointing with families and their sick loved one...tears and laying on of hands with the healing oils! What happened with John's biopsy? The Holy Spirit intervened! As he did the surgery they kept looking at the tissue with no results... he sent some to the lab and told us there was not a good chance that we would get an answer. Hiding in some blood that he had removed there were a few lymphoma cells and that was enough to diagnose John! No more surgery... although Pat says that he would have never allowed it to happen! Finally as John was doing so well with the chemo... we were to the point to complete responce when they saw a small spot on the MRI... the cancer was back! Radiation was the plan.. . so scarey as John had been told that down the road it could cause dementia.... "mom, I want to live." Was what he told me.... My parents arrived before we started with a relic of Solanus Casey and prayers at mass along with his 3rd annointing in front of the entire church at the 8a mass! So powerful and the next MRI was clear! John was cancer free around Christmas!
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