This transcript has been lightly cleaned up for easy reading. Blaine's opening and closing come from the notes he speaks from, so a few words may differ from the audio.

Opening

Blaine: Greetings, and welcome to another episode of our Never Alone Faith Over Cancer podcast. Hi, I'm Blaine Millet, your host, and wherever you are right now and whatever you happen to be doing... thank you for taking the time to join us today. I really appreciate it.

Today I get to introduce you to a friend of mine, David Carpenter. David and I go to the same church, and he's been a huge help behind the scenes with our website so our podcast and devotionals can reach more people. But I have to be honest with you... until we sat down and recorded this conversation, I didn't really know the details of his story. All I knew is that he had been on a cancer journey and was excited for the opportunity to tell us his story.

David's story is so deep and rich that it needs to be shared in two episodes, and this is the first. And here is what I can absolutely promise you... by the time you have listened to both of them, you will have more hope, more encouragement, more peace, and a stronger faith. Guaranteed.

So let me dive in and tell you what today's episode is about. Without giving anything away before you hear David's story, I can tell you that it will show you what your faith can do when somebody hands you a number.

Because at some point on our journeys, most of us get handed one. A percentage. A survival rate. A timeline. And when that number comes, it can feel like it's the whole story... like it's the last word on your life.

David got handed a number too. And I want you to listen very closely to what he and his wife Gretchen said back to it... because I believe it's one of the most faith-filled answers I have ever heard on this podcast.

And let me give you one thing to listen for along the way. David's surgery landed on a very particular date. A friend of his pointed out what that date was... and it gave David a peace he carried right through the doors of that operating room. I absolutely love this part...and I'm pretty sure you will too.

So with that, I'm thrilled to have you meet my friend, David Carpenter.

The Conversation

Blaine: David, I truly appreciate your time and I know what you're gonna say is gonna certainly have an impact on many people. So thanks for taking the time to be here and share that story with us. And if you could maybe just take a minute or two and tell us who David Carpenter is so we have a little bit more background before we dive in and get to hear your story.

David: Sure thing. Well, it's an honor to be here. I appreciate it. I hope I inspire or give comfort to at least one person. So I'm happy to share my story. I'm David Carpenter and I'm 58 years old. I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm now a grandfather, I'm a Christian, I'm a Christ follower, I'm an entrepreneur, business owner for about 17 years, and I'm an employer.

And I'm a tech enthusiast. So like you, I'm really into Claude and use it every single day, as well as other technologies like Grok. So I love life, I love to travel, we love to boat. My wife and I have been boaters for probably almost 20 years, and we have a place, we share a place over in Lake Chelan that we like to get to, which involves the sun and the boating and we even get our kids and our grandkids there. So, at least once a year. That's a little bit about me.

Blaine: Okay. Well, you know, I didn't know that about the boating part. We are big boaters as well. And we were in fact we were just out yesterday and in October and there was like nobody on the lake. So you know, they've all given up after September, I guess. So

David: We put our boat in the garage, got it winterized and put it away. Just too busy. October's just too busy.

Blaine: There you go. That's why there's nobody on the lake when we're out there. All right. Well, hey, thanks for sharing that. So you know, as I like to say as we kind of talk about people's stories, is you know, everybody's story has a beginning, regardless of whatever the ending looks like. So what why don't we just start at the very beginning and just kind of take us through your journey... that you were going through, where you were, what was going on and just let me turn it over to you and just start where you wanna start with it.

David: Sounds good. Sounds good. I put down some thoughts of what were the key moments in what I'm calling my cancer journey. And I think it all really started with my dad. And when I was about 12 or 13 years old, he was diagnosed with hairy cell leukemia, which is a very rare form of leukemia. They didn't have a cure for it, but they gave him at least five years to live. If he the summer, I guess the summer that I turned either 13 or 14, he was gonna have a kind of a preventative surgery where they were gonna go in and I think they were gonna remove his spleen because there were so many white blood cells down there, it was like clogging up the system. And due to complications in that surgery, he contracted pneumonia.

And he fell into a coma and he never came out of the coma. So I remember being I guess I was thirteen, summer of whatever, eighty one or something, and I got pulled out of I was at a three week music camp, Marrowstone music camp out in the, you know, out on the peninsula. And I remember them Pulling me out of there and sticking me on a sticking me on a ferry to go meet my mom. My mom and dad were divorced when I was two. But she picked me up and took me to the hospital to go see my dad, and he's in a coma. First day he was in a coma. And I remember talking to him. He couldn't talk back.

But I could see him breathing and I felt like he was listening to me and I was giving him encouragement and I was saying, You're gonna make it, you're gonna you're a fighter, and all this stuff. And by the third or fourth day, there was no movement, there was no reaction. And I at some point I just told him it's okay. Like if you're in pain and you don't need to fight through this if you can't make it and it was about three weeks, I believe, that he was in a coma.

Yeah, and he just died. And the thing about it, my biggest regret was what an awful kid I was to him that summer because he was, you know, asking for sympathy and asking for you know, good behavior and I spent half the summer with him and half with my mom and I really just thought well, they tell you this is just a preventative operation and they you still got five years and I was just defiant little thirteen, fourteen year old and I never got a chance to apologize except when he was in a coma. And so for the next year my life was just a blur. It was bad at school, was bad with friends. I was not a great student. I was not nice to my teachers. And I had this fear, right? Like this must this is probably hereditary. Is this in my genes? Am I gonna have hairy cell leukemia? And so at some point Sometime a probably several times I asked doctors and they didn't think hairy cell leukemia was something you could get from DNA. You didn't think it was they thought it was very rare and it was a mutation and it probably wouldn't have it. But in the back of my mind I was like, I inherited, you know, half my other traits from him. Why wouldn't I inherit that? So got through that and came out then and Made it to I guess ninth grade and high school and things got better, turned around and I was able to kind of compartmentalize what had happened and kind of moved on with my life and my mom had remarried somewhere in there when I was like maybe seven and I had not really appreciated my stepdad when my dad was alive. But When there was no dad alive then all of a sudden I became a lot closer to my stepdad and my mom. So fast forward got married met Gretchen my wife in college at UW when I was a senior we got married in ninety eight we had our first son then in 2000 we had our daughter 2004 we had our third kiddo our younger son. And in about 2006, my mom got colon cancer. And she was hospitalized. And they ended up having to cut half her colon out to get rid of the cancer. But they were able to isolate it and get rid of it. And so that was like, whew, more cancer in the family, but at least she's good.

And a few years later, my stepdad contracted cancer. I don't remember exactly what it was, but I think it was prostate cancer and it metastasized and he was in a bad place. I was called, we were away on a ski vacation in Montana. I think it was Big Sky.

Got the call, like you need to come home. Dad, stepdad is not well. He's not gonna make it through the weekend. So it was like one, two, three. Like all the big, you know, parental figures in my life were dying of cancer. So I kind of I kind of knew cancer would not be unexpected if cancer appeared in my life. I wasn't dwelling on it.

But I often prayed for doctors and advancements in cancer care and in good health. I prayed and still to this day my wife and I pray for good health for our family and our kids and our grandkids and everybody. So fast forward to 2022, next chapter.

Blaine: Can I ask you one quick question? So with all three of them going through that, were they believers or where were they in their faith?

David: They were.

I don't know about my dad. I was too young. He

Blaine: Yeah, that makes sense.

David: I don't remember I don't remember him being not a believer, but I know my mom was and is a believer and my stepdad, I think, went to church, but right at the end there he really I talked to him. I remember talking to him the night before he passed away about accepting Jesus and he was like all on board. He was fully ready.

So I think at least two out of three, yeah.

Blaine: All right. Hey, well hey, that's good news.

All right, well I'll let you get back to it... next chapter.

David: Next chapter. So, 2022. Our son is preparing for his senior year. Our younger son Ryan is preparing for his senior year. And he wanted to take a bunch of friends over to the gorge for a big concert. I think it's Watershed. And Morgan Wallen and Kane Brown were playing.

And we went, we took a bunch, you know, eight to ten high school kids, boys and girls, and we hosted them at Moses Lake. And that was the summer it was really hot. It was like 108 at the concert venue. And so we would try to keep the kids away from the venue until the big names came on to try to keep them out of the heat, try to keep them hydrated and everything. And so I had this fantastic love of music.

Anyway, and I really became a huge fan of Morgan Wallen at that show.

And a little bit later in the summer, I got a new truck. We traded in our suburban, and I got this new truck, and it was all tricked out with I think it has 19 speakers, and I was just fully enjoying music and fully enjoying the truck and fully enjoying Morgan Wallen at a fairly high volume. And I started to notice that I was missing a lot of the music. I was having to turn the music up a little louder than usual. And people that would get in the truck with me would immediately, especially my oldest son, would immediately tell me to turn it down, turn it down. So I realized there was something going on with my ears. And I started to I had feelings like my right ear was plugged.

And I actually I remember going into an urgent care one day and asking them to check on my ear. I said, I know there's something in my ear. Would you please check this out and remove whatever's blocking my ear? And they went in there and said, your ears are really clean. No, your ears, you're in great shape. And I was like, there's something wrong.

So I went in to see an audiologist or a audio specialist at Swedish and get my hearing tested. And about that same time I started having dizziness issues. I started having problems. I remember walking down a hotel hallway. I was at a conference back in Boston and I was having a hard time keeping my balance walking down the hallway. Everything just seemed like it was in motion. So I went in and got my hearing tested, and they said, yeah, your right ear is not great. Your understandability... your hearing comprehension, your right ear is down, I think they said it was like 60%.

And we'd like it to be up where your left ear is, you know, 90 to 100%. And they said, why don't you, why don't you just come back in one month and we'll measure it again and we'll see if there's anything really going on, like the rate of change. I remember coming back a month later, probably January or February of '23, and my hearing comprehension in my right ear had dropped to 30%.

Or less, under 30% in just one month. So it was going close to zero. And I remember the audio doctor they hear the ear doctor at Swedish saying I think this is an acoustic neuroma. It's a benign it's a benign tumor. It's they also call it a vestibular schwannoma. It's a very slow growing Almost always benign tumor. It's not a brain tumor in a strict sense, it's not cancer and it doesn't spread. And he said, But what I think is happening is that thing that schwannoma is pressing on your ear and it's causing disruption. So we need to go in and remove it. And you know, worst case, you're gonna lose your hearing and right ear, but best case, we're gonna catch it in time and restore your hearing. So he they I remember him making a big deal about moving the this the surgery had originally been scheduled for June and they moved it up to March, specifically 3:16, March 16th. And I remember him he was gonna be in the surgery with Dr. Zachary Litvack at Swedish to guide him because he was a ear specialist, he could guide him where the You know, the where the wires are between the ears, ear and the brain, the nerves, and everything. And I remember my good friend Bob King made a comment. He said, At least we know what 3:16 is, right? For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son. So I felt really good going into the surgery. Plus, they had told me it was it's not cancer, it's almost certainly acoustic neuroma, schwannoma. And When I got to that morning, I was not worried at all. I mean, I was praying, my wife was positive. It's surgery, it's brain surgery, but all things were looking good. The odds of it being cancer, we thought were like less than 1%. So when I went in, I remember Dr. Litvack telling me, okay, this is a complicated surgery. It's probably gonna be four or five hours.

And if we bring you out of surgery before four to five hours, that means something has gone wrong. And I was like, okay. And they complete, you know, sedation. So I'm completely under. And he brought me out in two and a half hours. And they woke me up. And I remember being very confused. And they said, We tried to get in there and it's a bloody mess. I remember Dr. Litvack's quote was a bloody mess. He said, We don't know what it is. We got as much as we could. We're getting really close to your brainstem. And we can't go any further. We don't feel it's safe. We had a we had the oncologist that runs the CyberKnife downstairs at Swedish.

Which is a, you know, very high powered, it's what I call it's an R2D2 like thing. It zooms around your head. They had him come up during the surgery and consult and say, if we leave 40% of this tumor, can you get the rest with CyberKnife? And he said, 100% certain I can. So they left 40% of the tumor in, they took 60% of tumor out, and we actually sent it, they sent it to DNA testing.

To see what it was, because they didn't even know what it was. And I believe it took the better part of it was 10 days to two weeks before we knew what it was. And the DNA test came back and said it was meningeal melanoma of the brain, which is extremely rare. They said I was like one of 15 or 20 people that had meningeal melanoma.

So they there's a long story there, but they set me up with some doctors, some really great doctors. One of them is Dr. Kelly Paulson at Swedish. She's a medical oncologist. And her first active business was to reassure me. She said, first of all, she's the director of melanomas for Swedish on the West Coast. And she said, we've got to find out where it originated because we can't treat, we can treat all kinds of melanomas.

But until we know where it originated, we can't treat it the right way, the correct way, the best way. So from her and from some other, you know, sources I found, the survival rate, if they find that the melanoma originated in your skin, is very good. It's very high, especially if you catch it quick. This is this wasn't quick, right? Because it had already metastasized to the brain. But she said we at least know which immunotherapies to apply to treat, you know, skin cancer melanoma. In the rare case, it's not in it's not from the skin, it's from the eyeball, usually. So what it happens in the eyeball, usually the back of the eyeball, it's a lot more difficult to treat. We have to use a completely different set of immunotherapies and Treatments and your survival rate, your five-year survival is a lot lower. And so she said, We're gonna hope for, we're gonna pray for the source being the skin. And if it's not, it'll be the eyes. And if it's a very slim chance it's not the eyes, then it'll be something else. And that's our worst case. We don't want that. That's the worst. So we went off and we did the You know, the skin, I can't remember what that's called, but have the skin doctor go over every inch of your body and look for any kind of melanoma. Nothing. No melanoma, no origin, no possible origin. Went to the eye doctors, had all the scans, all the tests for the eyes, nothing. Zero. So we went back and I remember going back to Dr. Paulson and saying, okay, so What are we gonna do? How are we gonna treat it? And she said, Well, we're gonna treat it, we're gonna treat it the best possible way that we can with the and I don't remember what if she said we're gonna treat it like it was scan or eyes, but she said, Do you wanna know your odds? Do you wanna know your chances of making it through this? And Gretchen and I kind of looked at each other and said, well, I mean, we beat all the odds so far. I mean, we've been very low percentage and we've been going through this whole time. So and I think she said under fourteen percent.

And I don't think it really fazed us because we had faith, we believed that we were going to get through this, we believed that God was gonna take care of us and put the doctors and the treatments in front of us. And we just had faith. So we just prayed about it. We said, well, we can beat it, 14. We can beat that. And there were some people, Dr. Jon Huseby is a Father of a good friend of mine, he became kind of my text and call mentor. And he said, We're not gonna let you die, David. We're gonna find a treatment. We're gonna find somebody that's doing a study. We're gonna, we're not gonna let you die. My good friend Joe Ellis, Bob King, these guys all served as mentors for me. I think you've got to find somebody that can help you through because your doctors are only gonna see you know, once a month or once every three months, and So, fast forward, I want to interject a little sidebar here. I just went to the Ivy Center because I'm committed to staying educated on the leading treatments and cures and technology related to cancer. And so Ivy Center Swedish is doing a great job. They put on these seminars in person every six months to a year. And I just went to one, and Dr. Cobbs is one of the ones that.

That was the leader there for years and he's an instrumental part of it. And he one of the things he said really caught me. He said there's three ways to get rid of cancer. You can cut it out, that's surgery. You can essentially bomb it, nuke it, which is x-rays and chemo, and there's immunotherapy. And he said, I firmly believe this is the future, that we're going to get to a place where everybody can have a personalized immunotherapy Designed for the individual based on the DNA of the tumor, based on the you know, they'll be able to build these RNA strands that attack the DNA of the tumor. And so I am I'm here to tell you I had all three. So I don't know. I batted a thousand on that. So 3:16 was the surgery. April, May was the CyberKnife. I got five treatments of CyberKnife. It was the coolest thing ever.

To have that big robot zooming around my head and shooting x-rays from all possible angles. And we actually maxed that out because it was so close to my spinal cord. They told me if it does come back, you will not be able to use x-ray CyberKnife ever again because you've maxed out your body. And then the immunotherapy started, and that was Dr. Paulson's domain. And I remember her saying, We're gonna have four courses.

And it's going to be a hybrid of two amazing immunotherapies. And they essentially what they do is they ID the cancer because the cancer cells love to hide and cloak themselves. It takes away the disguise of the cancers and then it stands up more soldiers to fight them, right? That's kind of that's what so the two that she gave me were called ipi and nivo, which are short for basically Yervoy and Opdivo.

And they give them together because they release different brakes on the immune system. They allow the immune system to function, your natural T cells function better. So they basically the body uses these checkpoint proteins as brakes. So many tumors hijack those brakes so the T cells stand down, and ipi and nivo each take one brake off. So it's just an amazing way to harness your body's own immune system. To harness what God already built and gave you. I do believe that God helped these scientists find these ways of releasing. I think God is involved in that.

So the consequence there, the only really thing, the only regret I have, while I was on these immunotherapy treatments, and she had a schedule of four of them, and I lasted through three, and then I went into some sort of a reaction. I missed out on Ryan's high school graduation trip to Mexico. And I remember Dr. Paulson telling me, if you're gonna have a... and she had some fancy word for it. If you're gonna your body's gonna go into convulsions and you know, your body's gonna react to this immunotherapy. I can't have you in a Mexican hospital. And I remember at that point thinking, wow, okay, so I am really, I am really up for something bad. Like something bad's gonna happen. She won't even let me go to Mexico, be in a Mexican hospital. So I missed out on a really fun trip. And after three Courses I totally had reaction and they said, Okay, well the good news is you're done. You're you've had your immunotherapy. Your body said enough and the T cells are activated.

Closing

Blaine: "We said, well, we can beat it... fourteen. We can beat that." That's what David told us he, his wife, family, and circle of friends and mentors said to that number.

Fourteen percent. That's the number David and Gretchen were handed. And did you catch what they did with it? They looked at each other... and they prayed about it. And then they said, "We can beat that."

But I want to be careful here as we talk about numbers and overcoming the odds. Because this is not a story about beating the odds; it is one about a number just being a number. Many of you listening have been handed a number, and it hasn't moved the way you've been praying it would. I'm not going to tell you that enough faith changes a percentage. You should absolutely keep praying, boldly, and asking Jesus for exactly what you want... but His plan is bigger than our numbers.

Here's what I want you to see in David's story. Faith didn't change his number. It changed who he faced that number with...Jesus.

And notice something else, because it's easy to rush right past it. David's faith didn't show up the day he got that number. It was already there. For years, he and Gretchen had been praying for good health for their family, praying for the doctors, praying for advancements in cancer care. So when the number came, their faith already knew exactly where to go.

And here's why I bring this up. If you're listening to this and you happen to not be in a storm right now, this is your moment. Build that relationship with Jesus NOW...don't wait. And if you are in the storm... it's not too late. Not even close. You can start right where you're sitting. As they say, if you didn't start yesterday, the next best time to start is RIGHT NOW!

So here's what I hope you take away from David's first episode. A number is not the last word on your life. Jesus is. Let me say that one again... a number is not the last word. Jesus is.

But before I leave this point about numbers, allow me to share a quick story from my own cancer journey as it relates to numbers. After my 3 surgeries (my first number), I was told that I needed to go through numerous immunotherapy treatments over the next 3 years...somewhere close to 100. Those numbers were overwhelming to me. I had to give them to God and ask Him to help me get through it all. Then there was the number of injections I would have over the next 6-plus months to get rid of a blood clot that I developed during a surgery...more numbers.

But I can tell you that by asking God to help me deal with this one day at a time, I found incredible peace on my journey, and the numbers didn't feel so overwhelming. I knew He had this, and He had me. That's all that mattered, and it's what helped me get through a very long and trying journey of my own. So, I get numbers. They can be overwhelming and consuming... or we can hand them to God and let Him carry them.

Now, I would be remiss if I didn't share one more thing from our conversation today, because I don't want you to miss it.

The night before his stepdad passed away, David sat with him and talked with him about accepting Jesus. And David told us he was all on board... fully ready.

Think about that for a minute. Of everything David has done in his life... that one conversation may be one of the most important ones he ever had and the one that lasts the longest. Because it lasts forever.

Maybe there's somebody you love who doesn't know Jesus yet. Don't wait for the night before. And maybe that somebody... is you. If you don't have that relationship with Jesus, or if yours has grown stale, or feels weak, or you're just plain angry at Him right now, please go over to our website and find the page called Accepting Jesus. It is the most important page we have.

Now let me give you a little insight into our next episode with David.

He goes on to tell us about the moment he finally said to God, "You're in control here." And what he was praying for at that point probably isn't what you'd expect. Then there's a scooter... a very steep hill... and no brakes. And at the very end, I asked David what he would say if Jesus were sitting right next to him. His answer was, to say the least, impactful. You won't want to miss it.

Until next time, thank you so much for listening today, and thank you for spending this time with me. And remember... Jesus is always with you. You are NEVER ALONE. May God bless you, and I hope you have an absolutely awesome day.