HomeBefore and After
by Buck Dopp
Mr. Henson, you’ve got cancer,” the doctor said. “I may be wrong. We’ll run more tests.”
“I’m going to be okay, whatever it is,” he said.
His wife agreed. “Absolutely.”
Mr. and Mrs. Henson prayed the doctor was wrong. They prayed if he was right, it would be cancer with a high cure rate. If cancer with a low cure rate, they prayed he would beat the odds.
The doctor was right. It was cancer.
“I can do this,” he said.
“I know you can,” she affirmed.
The Hensons prayed for him to have the strength to endure the chemo and radiation: for him to tolerate the medication, vomiting, hair loss and nausea. They prayed for energy for her to drive him to and from the doctors’ appointments despite lack of sleep from worry.
After the tempest had disrupted their lives, the Hensons prayed all the cancer was gone for good. They prayed his hair and health and stamina would return. They prayed their lives would return to normal.
That prayer wasn’t answered. Their lives never returned to normal. The Hensons changed. They laughed more than they did before. They enjoyed life’s little surprises. They traveled and saw things they always wanted to see. They visited family and friends they hadn’t seen in years. They lived each day as if it was their last and made the most of every opportunity to learn something new and to appreciate things of beauty.
They didn’t change everything though.
They continued to pray.
Buck Dopp’s first novel, Kingpin and Eli was published in December 2013 and explores the choices real people make when facing moral dilemmas and the impact of ambitious rivalry and envy in the workplace. It is available on Amazon.com and Kindle. He retired from a twenty-seven-year career in business management in 2008, deciding instead to write full-time. Dopp's stories have appeared in The Oasis Journal and A Long Story Short's e-zine. He is the past president of the Lake Havasu City Writers Group, which published his stories in its anthology, Offerings of the Oasis.
