Rick Calhoun's mother died of pancreatic cancer. She was sixty-two years old. Three months from diagnosis to death. That is how fast pancreatic cancer moves. Three months. Barely enough time to say goodbye.
When Rick received his own diagnosis at age fifty-seven — stage 3 adenocarcinoma pancreatic cancer — the fear was not theoretical. It had a timeline. It had a face. It had a name: his mother's.
The Diagnosis
April 2021. After an exhausting two-week evaluation at three different hospitals, the conclusion was unanimous: the cancer had wrapped around the arteries in a way that made surgical removal impossible. All three hospitals agreed. No surgery. The only option was the most aggressive chemotherapy regimen available — described as the strongest chemo any man could receive. And it was not designed to cure him. It was designed to prolong his life.
That is a particular kind of sentence. Not "we can fix this" but "we can slow this down." For a man whose mother had gone from diagnosis to death in ninety days with the same disease, those words carried the weight of a eulogy.
The Fear
The fear of pancreatic cancer is unique. The survival statistics are public knowledge. The speed of the disease is well documented. When you are diagnosed with something that moves this fast and kills this efficiently, fear is not irrational. It is a reasonable response to terrifying data.
Rick felt the full weight of it. The memory of his mother's rapid decline. The awareness that he was now walking the same road. The knowledge that three world-class hospitals had looked at his scans and said there was nothing else to try.
The Dreams
But a week after the diagnosis, something began to happen. Rick had been learning about hearing God's voice — specifically, how God sometimes speaks through dreams. And God gave him three dreams in quick succession.
These were not vague impressions. They were specific, directional, and they spoke directly to his situation. Rick began journaling what he heard. He started taking healing scriptures as daily medicine — reading them aloud over his body, receiving them not as theory but as truth directed at his specific cells, his specific cancer, his specific fear.
He learned daily communion — not as a ritual, but as a daily encounter with the God who was guiding him step by step through the valley of the shadow of death.
The Shift
The fear did not disappear in a single moment. It lost its grip gradually, as Rick's awareness of God's voice grew louder than the voice of the diagnosis. Every dream, every scripture, every communion was another brick in a wall that fear could not climb over.
Rick fought his cancer with medicine and with faith simultaneously. He did not reject the chemotherapy. He received it. But he also received something else — a daily, tangible awareness that God was directing his steps, that his mother's story did not have to be his story, and that the same God who allows suffering also walks through it with those who listen.
What This Means for You
If you have watched someone you love die of the same disease you have just been diagnosed with, your fear is carrying extra weight that other people cannot see. You are not just afraid of what might happen to you. You are reliving what already happened to them.
Rick Calhoun's story does not promise a clean ending. It promises a present God. A God who speaks in dreams. A God who meets you in scripture. A God who will not leave you alone in the dark, even when three hospitals have said there is nothing more they can do.
Fear says: you know how this ends. You saw what happened to your mother. God says: I am writing a different story for you. Will you listen?
