CANCER VICTIM CLAIMS ‘MIRACLE’ CURE
IT is not often we hear of miracles. Even, if we did, a miracle is a phenomenon that needs to be investigated, thoroughly examined or analysed and proven to be so.
Only then will the medical authorities or the Church accept a sudden and inexplicable cure as a miracle.
But this is not to say that a miracle does not happen. It has. Yet it is something that the authorities cannot explain how or why it happens.
The story of Christopher Long of Singapore is such an example. He honestly believes that his cure from the insidious fourth stage lung cancer with metastases to the fifth backbone vertebrae and his worsening, inoperable lung tumour of 8cm by 5cm is indeed a miracle.
Doctors had earlier told him when they examined him last July that he had eight months to live if he did not undergo chemotherapy. Even if he went for treatment immediately of six cycles of chemotherapy and 10 consecutive days of radiotherapy, his life span might only extend a further three or four months.
But the doctors did not tell him that his quality of life, already weakened by the cancer, would get even worse.
The cancer had “eaten up” his backbone so much that it was pressing on the nerve. He was in agony and it was impossible to endure without morphine every two hours.
“I could still walk slowly and carefully, though, with my crutches,” he said, according to an email I received. “But I would get tired after just 10 or 15 minutes due to the lung tumour.”
Long felt he was going downhill pretty fast. He looked miserable and felt miserable. He has lost more than 15kg in weight from his normal 90kg plus.
Then something happened to him. For some reason, he said to himself, if he had the strength to go anywhere, he would rather go to a church than anywhere else.
It was on November 1, 2008 – the All Saints Day, an important event for the church. As he listened to the priest’s homely at the Star of the Sea Church in Yishun about Mother Mary and her Miraculous Water at Lourdes, he said silently to himself: “I’m sorry, Mother. I can’t go to Lourdes.”
The next day being All Souls Day, he went to church again, this time to the Holy Cross Church in Clementi Avenue. He had been to this church several times previously but had never really taken notice of a statue of Mother Mary at the far end though he had seen it before.
“As I was early, I hobbled over to her statue on my crutches to say a prayer to her,” he added. This time he felt a “stunned” feeling that “just gripped” him.
“I realised that her statue was standing in a fountain of water and that it was constructed in such a way that the water appeared to be flowing out from directly under her feet.
“More stunning was the voice inside my head, which said: ‘Silly boy. You don’t have to go to Lourdes. Just use my water here to bless yourself.’
“I was stunned and shocked, but without hesitation I just said: ‘Yes, Mother’ and bent down very painfully and used her water to make the sign of the cross over my chest and back.
“And, immediately, from a feeling of sad, resigned and with nothing to look forward to, my attitude changed to a kind of inner joy and happiness from knowing that I was going to be healed or cured or whatever you want to call it.”
Almost every day after that, Long went back to the statue, said a prayer, thanked her and used her water to make the sign of the cross on his chest and back.
And every day thereafter, he felt the excruciating pain in his back was getting lesser and lesser and his lungs were getting stronger and stronger.
He also felt that Mother Mary was taking care of him all the way because a few days later a stranger passed a bottle of Lourdes water to his mother for him.
He thought how this man knew that he wanted the Lourdes water as he had not told anyone about it, not even his mother. Also he had not told anyone of his “encounter” with Mother Mary.
Surprisingly, a few days later, another bottle of Lourdes water came from another stranger. This was followed a few days later by a message that The Knights of Malta were organising a “Lourdes experience” at the Indoor Stadium in Singapore.
Long said: “So, to me, it was like Mother Mary telling me that she would heal me if I used her water to bless myself, then she brought her Lourdes holy water to me, not once but twice, and then she brought Lourdes itself to me.
“Triple coincidence? I don’t think so. I think she went all the way to make sure that if I couldn’t go to Lourdes, she would bring Lourdes to me.
“Fantastic? Amazing? Yea. I think so.”
On last Christmas Eve – just over six months after he was diagnosed with lung cancer – Long went to midnight mass without any crutches. Although the service lasted four hours, he said, he did not feel tired, and the pain in his back had receded so much that he had reduced his morphine doses from every two hours to once every morning.
By January 9 this year, he had stopped the morphine completely and his back pain was about 10% of what it had been.
His doctor told him after a CT scan that the tumour was still there but it had not grown. “This was actually excellent news, given that the rapidly multiplying nature of my cancer cells.”
After a second scan in February this year, the doctor did not know how or why the tumour had remained stagnant but he was very happy that the chemotherapy “had suddenly begun to work so well”.
On April 22 this year, after two more CT scans, his doctor told him that he (Long) belonged to a very rare category of people whose cancer does not seem to be moving at all. There would be no further need for chemotherapy but he had to go for follow-up CT scans every three months.
Last month his inability to draw full breath was gone and he went jogging for about 400 metres because he suddenly had the urge to jog. He did not feel tired at all. The pain in his backbone had also gone.
He felt a little tight though but thought it was simply unbelievable considering that the cancer had eaten away so much of his backbone. “
Even if the combination of radiotherapy and chemotherapy had killed all the cancer cells, treatment does not mend the bone,” Long stressed. So how did the functioning of my lungs and backbone come back to normal?
“Thanks to God’s miracle and Mother Mary’s holy water.
“And I want to stress that everything I have said is accurate and not exaggerated nor embellished in any way. Every word is true and much, much more incredible things also, which I will record…”
As proof of his experience, I have also received some of Long’s photos, including tof blood stained cloth. But, without forensic evidcence to support them, it is difficult to determine the true nature of the samples in the photos. I will take his word for what it is worth.
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