April 7, 2017
A cancer diagnosis is terrifying. The news alone is very difficult to hear. Once the dreaded words sink in, there’s the challenge of figuring out where to go for treatment.
That’s where Nathan Roberts, 50, was in September 2015. He woke up from a colonoscopy to the news that he had a tumor. The next day he was told it was cancer.
Nathan’s wife, Shauna, naturally was determined to find the very best care for her husband. She spent hours researching cancer treatment facilities. She took him to Atlanta, where a team of doctors promised to cure him. But Nathan didn’t want to be that far from his home in Dawson, where he was born and raised.
“That’s a long way from home for six weeks,” he said.
The couple headed home to think and pray about it. Nathan had heard about Marshall Cancer Care Center in Albertville from his sister. During an appointment with a surgeon in Huntsville, Nathan brought up his dilemma. He asked what was the difference between radiation in his hometown and radiation in Atlanta. The surgeon said there is no difference. It’s the same radiation and doctors will give you the largest amount your body can tolerate, he was told.
So Nathan made an appointment with Dr. Tom Payne at Marshall Cancer Care. During that first visit, Dr. Payne asked Nathan if he could pray with him. He knew then he was in the right place.
“I just broke down,” he recalled. “I knew this was the place God wanted me to be. He prayed with me and it helped me tremendously.”
In order to shrink the tumor before it was surgically removed, Nathan had six weeks of chemotherapy and radiation. He drove himself to Marshall Cancer Care five days a week. The time he spent there getting to know the staff really made an impression on him.
“The faith here is overwhelming,” he said. “You can tell God has got his hand on it because of the people. They’re experts. They’re professional. They’re caring. I knew they were praying for me. It takes special people to do what they do.”
Once Nathan finished treatments, it was time for surgery. He went to Huntsville Jan. 13, 2016, for what turned out to be a difficult procedure. Nathan’s doctor told him he expected the procedure to take a couple of hours but it lasted five hours. After removing the tumor, the surgeon had to painstakingly do a resection by hand.
Afterwards, Nathan was the sickest he has ever been. He remembers wanting to die it was so bad. Instead, he prayed for relief and he got it. Despite six weeks with a colostomy bag, his condition has steadily improved.
“Everything has been good since then,” he said. “What God does, he does good.”
Nathan forced himself to go through eight more chemo treatments his doctors recommended as a preventive measure. Now he heads back to Marshall Cancer Care for blood work every three months and a scan every six months. He just hit the one-year mark for being cancer free.
“Dr. (Jonathan) Storey said my blood work looked like a man who had never had cancer,” Nathan said, alternating between smiling and shedding tears.
A friend stricken with colon cancer 16 years ago prompted Nathan to begin regular scans. A scheduling oversight caused him to miss a scan that allowed time for cancer to grow into a large tumor. If he had the scan he missed, his doctor told him the cancer would likely have been discovered as a polyp, requiring only a snip to remove.
“It’s important for people to realize how quickly it can go from a little snip to a five-hour surgery,” he said. “I want to encourage people to stay on top of that.”
Nathan feels good now. He’s back at work as a supervisor of a hosiery mill. He’s convinced he is a better man as a cancer survivor than he was before. It reinforced his faith and brought closer together his family, including his five daughters and four siblings.
“I give God the credit,” he said. “He has taken something bad and turned it into something good.”