Update on David Bruggeman, Monday, April 24
I have been incommunicado this past week because I flew to Phoenix to be with my son, David, for a few days, while he is undergoing treatment at the integrative medical clinic.
I had thought I would be able to post blogs while on the trip. Obviously, that did not happen as the hours and days flew by, with all my time occupied with being with David and helping his daughter, Annie, in any way I could.
Especially on trips, I like to have with me my tiny personal digital recorder into which I can dictate thoughts, observations, etc. without pulling out pen and paper.
(Yes, I know, I could do the same thing on my iPhone, but I really don’t want to share all my personal stuff with the gang in Cupertino, California {HQ of Apple} or in Shanghai, China, for that matter.)
As I rested yesterday and recorded more thoughts, reflections, observations, and memories of the trip, it ended up being nearly three hours’ worth of audio, which would amount to about 50 pages (minimum) of typed material.
Since I am now more than “way behind” (way behind is normal in my life), and there is no need to unload all the details on you, our dear readers and supporters, I will try to summarize in short order here.
The bottom line is that David is still on the precipice of departing this world, but there seems to be a couple hopeful signs. For context, when he flew from Portland, Oregon, to Phoenix, he was down to 96 pounds.
Despite knowing that, when I first saw him, I almost gasped and I hoped he did not notice—but he may have. If you remember from your world history book, seeing the photos of the men in the Nazi concentration camps near the end of World War II, that is what David looks like, emaciated, with sunken cheeks, etc.
The clinic in Phoenix specializes in cases where the allopathic/oncology hospitals/doctors have given up. In his case, after running an MRI, they (at a Portland hospital) essentially told him to go home and get your affairs in order.
But David is a fighter, and has strong faith in the Almighty One of Israel. One hopeful sign is that by the time I left on Saturday morning, his weight was up to 112 pounds.
There were three crises in last week. I will forgo sharing the first two. The third crisis was on Saturday late afternoon when David’s pain level was becoming unbearable. The clinic is closed over the weekend, and neither they nor the pain management company (separate business from the clinic) would take responsibility for ordering up any more meds.
They said our only alternative was to go to a hospital emergency room, and perhaps be admitted so they could take responsibility for additional pain meds and to monitor him over the weekend.
As it turned out, after they administered a bigger dose in the ER, David was relieved to a lesser level of pain where he could speak enough to be active in the decision (with his daughter, Annie, who has been his 24/7 caregiver ever since two days after he got to Phoenix) to allow them to do a recommended CT scan.
It showed multiple masses (almost certainly cancer tumors) in various places in the abdomen. If he has progressed in strength and weight, the plan is that the clinic will do a biopsy soon—perhaps late today.
So as the additional pain meds kicked in, and David was able to speak, he testified to the ER doctor that when he got on that plane from Portland to Phoenix, that he was in such agony that he knew that if he made it all the way to Phoenix, it would be totally by the sovereign grace of God Almighty!
David has always had a high tolerance for pain and all his life been a very athletic type—not baseball, football, or basketball, but racquetball, triathlons, and later snow skiing, hang-gliding, and paddle-boarding on the mighty Columbia River which separates Oregon from Washington.
He taught his six daughters to snow ski on Mt. Hood (near where they lived) when they were each only three years old, and has taught his youngest daughter to paddle-board on the Columbia.
At nine years old, she is a champion in the Pacific Northwest, winning races against adults and teenaged boys. Yes, Grandpa James is very proud of all his granddaughters.
Especially including Annie. She is doing a phenomenal job of caregiving and managing virtually all aspects of the current situation. I had many questions and was second-guessing about this and that before I arrived.
But seeing the rented home in which they are staying, how she is transporting him to the clinic, and my going with her and David to the clinic, examining all the paper work in her three-ring binder which reports the treatments thus far, and the plan of treatment ahead, I concur that it is the best route for him to take, integrating the best of alternative modalities with the—at this critical point—the need for pain meds and some allopathic procedures.
They (the integrative medical clinic, the nutrition provider company, and the pain management company) must work together to walk a thin tightrope in balancing his need for nourishment to get his weight up and some measure of strength back before they can proceed too far with any type of targeted allopathic regimen.
A PICC line had been installed shortly after he began treatment. A PICC line is a peripherally-inserted central catheter, a long, soft, flexible tube inserted into a vein in the upper arm.
For several hours a day at the clinic, he is receiving IV drips of pain medication and/or with either a saline drip or the TPN (nutrition liquid) going into the second port of the PICC line.
He has been using the frankincense oil I had shipped to him and told me it was very helpful. I anointed him with oil according to the process outlined in the Bible in James, chapter 5.
Also, separately, I anointed him with the holy anointing oil which I had obtained from Chuck Mueller at our Kansas City Conference in September of 2013. Chuck had compounded it according to the formula given in the Bible. I spoke life to all the non-cancerous cells in David’s body and good riddance to all the cancer cells afflicting him.
David wanted to personally apply the frankincense oil carefully around his abdomen, and his prior groans of pain changed within minutes, as he was still rubbing it in, to sighs of “aaahh” and relief to a tolerable level!
It is hoped that this report to all of you brothers and sisters-in-Christ will encourage you to continue praying for David and to keep believing with me that our Father in heaven is in the process of working a miraculous recovery—for His glory alone!
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