It started with a piece of food. During dinner one evening, something cut Polly Kenzie's throat on the way down — badly enough to send her to the emergency room. The ER doctors dealt with the throat injury. But while they were running tests, they found something else entirely.
A tumour. It had completely grown around her kidney. She had no symptoms. No pain. No warning signs. The cancer had been building silently inside her body for who knows how long.
The Diagnosis
Polly Kenzie was a parishioner at St. Frances Cabrini in Allen Park, Michigan. When the kidney cancer specialist examined her case, the news was blunt: stage 4 kidney cancer. Given her advanced age and the extent of the disease, the specialist said she would die within five years. There was no cure.
Polly looked at the specialist and said something the doctor probably was not expecting:
"No, you are wrong. I am not going to die from this. I will die from something else, but it would not be from this."
The Army
In December 2018, surgeons removed part of her lung after cancer was found there too. In the summer of 2019, she suffered a stroke, and doctors feared the cancer had spread to her brain. Everything was getting worse.
But something else was happening at the same time. Polly's mother had mobilised what can only be described as an army of prayer warriors. People from multiple churches, multiple denominations, across the country. They stormed heaven on Polly's behalf.
A friend brought her holy water from the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in France, blessed by the Knights of Malta. Polly drank it. She believed it would kill every cancer cell in her body.
The Scan
At her next cancer screening, the doctors looked at the results. And then looked again.
No cancer. Anywhere.
In May 2020, Polly Kenzie was officially pronounced cancer-free.
What She Said
When asked how she made sense of it — the terminal diagnosis, the lung surgery, the stroke, the prayers, and then nothing — Polly gave an answer with the kind of simplicity that only comes from someone who has been to the edge and come back:
"I think God just decided to heal me."
What This Means for You
Polly Kenzie did not have a gentle experience. She was cut open. She had a stroke. She was told she was dying. The road from diagnosis to healing was brutal. But throughout all of it, she had people praying. Not one person. Not two. An army.
If you are the one who is sick, let people pray for you. Let them storm heaven. You do not have to carry this alone. And if you are the one praying for someone with cancer — do not stop. Do not grow weary. Your prayers are not background noise. They are the sound that moves God's hand.
