Here's a nice story about a seventeen-year-old diagnosed with stage four non-Hodgkin's lymphoma who got to meet the (now former) Pope via the Make-a-Wish foundation. Now, at nineteen, he is in remission and attending a Jesuit college with an eye toward the priesthood. When one Catholic blog tried to suggest that the audience with the Pope was the reason for the young man's recovery, he said, quite sensibly:
"I credit all the years of medical research and the training of all the doctors going to school -- all that definitely cured me. But God was behind it, helping me go through the treatment. Medical science is phenomenal. It would have been a death sentence 30 years ago, but in less than a year, I am back on my feet."
He added, "Every time people see cancer and the pope, they assume it's a miraculous healing. Chemo helped me fight the cancer. Make-A-Wish helped me fight the chemo. Knowing the pope was in my future helped me get through that, and in a small, non-miraculous way, helped cure my cancer."
It's really nice to see a story which doesn't label the remission a "miracle," but which credits medical science and the hard work of doctors instead.
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