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The Rev. Carlin Dempsey has learned the truth of the adage "Once a cancer patient, always a cancer patient."
BY JIM HALL The Rev. Carlin Dempsey had been away from his church for a month, in Baltimore for more cancer treatment. When he walked to the pulpit at Kings Highway Baptist Church on a Sunday in October, church members stood and applauded. "All the cards, the notes, the gifts, the financial gifts, the phone calls, the food," he said. "You've just been so wonderful." Dempsey's brown suit hung looser than it did before his operation. His color revealed the strain of surgery, and his voice betrayed him twice during his sermon. But none of the surgeries or chemotherapy treatments seemed to matter when he was in the pulpit. "Bring every thought into captivity," he told the Stafford County congregation. For as a man "thinketh in his heart," so he is. Dempsey, 58, preached from 2 Corinthians and Proverbs, advising a spiritual single-mindedness. But the lesson also described his approach to cancer. He's tried to bring his thoughts into captivity after being diagnosed with colon cancer in January 2005, to live normally in the face of so much change. One of his nurses helped define the challenge. Soon after diagnosis, she was hooking him to a bag of medicine and saw that he was depressed. "Look at me," she said. Dempsey raised his head and looked her in the eyes. "You are not dying with cancer," she told him. "You are living with cancer." The words were familiar, even cliche, but they burned into him. Dempsey began to do exactly as she said. He acknowledged the disease but refused to let it dominate his life. Cancer became the boorish uncle who had unexpectedly showed up for dinner. Dempsey set a place for the man but was determined not to let him ruin the meal. A chronic disease Last year, nearly 1,270 people in the Fredericksburg area were diagnosed with cancer, according to Mary Washington Hospital figures. Nationwide, more than 1.4 million people will get cancer diagnoses this year, according to the American Cancer Society. These patients undergo surgery, radiation and chemical treatments. And many, like Dempsey, think they are cancer-free. Then the disease returns.
Read more stories about Stafford Date published: 12/16/2007
Dempsey & I have clashed over biblical interpretation and thinly veiled political endorsements from his pulpit, but he is a good man at heart. I wish him a speedy & complete recovery, and all the best for him and his family during this Christmas season in the New Year.
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