Juan Perez sat in a wheelchair, wearing a red blanket and a peaceful look. He was approaching the famous sanctuary in Lourdes, France, where many devotees believe spontaneous cures occur.
Perez has synovial sarcoma, a soft-tissue cancer that originated around his heart. He has had surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and immunotherapy at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA), a clinical partner of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. With current care, most patients with that condition live for 12 to 16 months.
Perez arrived in Lourdes last spring after being diagnosed 21 months earlier. He and his wife, Susan, bathed in a grotto spring that many believers identify with several healings. They sipped the fresh spring water. They prayed among other pilgrims.
“We gathered, 25,000 people in one church,” recalled Perez, 67, a devoted Catholic. “It was all sick people, people with cancer, but all with one purpose.”
Five months later, after missing much of July due to illness, he has resumed his regular schedule, performing ballads for audiences at renowned public spaces across Seattle.
Dr. Seth Pollack, his SCCA oncologist and Fred Hutch clinical researcher, reported that the tumors in his body had reduced. Perez no longer uses the wheelchair. He said his prayers had been answered. But not in the way you may expect, as you will see later.
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Science is founded on concrete facts and repeatable experiments. However, there is a growing corpus of research into the significance that something indescribable – faith — might play for some people. In a recent survey of 8,000 cancer survivors, more than two-thirds agreed with the statement: “My faith or spirituality has helped me through my cancer experience.”
Four staff chaplains from a variety of ideologies are available to patients seeking their assistance at SCCA, where Perez receives an immunotherapy medicine. Other patients may be referred by staff or through “distress questionnaires” that assess religious/spiritual/existential distress, depression, and other quality-of-life issues.
“We see if they are willing to discuss matters with us. Dr. Stephen King, manager of the SCCA chaplaincy program, responded, “Yes, and no.” “We meet with any patient of any belief system, whether it’s questioning, skeptical, atheist, devout, believer, whatever — one human being caring for another.”
Patients may be experiencing a crisis of faith, or at least fresh dents in their convictions, as a result of a diagnosis, treatment, or prognosis. This concern even has a scientific name: “R/S struggle,” which stands for “religious or spiritual.”
