PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | EPISODE 292: Seven-Year Battle with Cancer, Part 1

LIFE TO THE FULL w/ Nancy Campbell

EPISODE 292: Seven-Year Battle with Cancer, Part 1

You are dreaming of a honeymoon pregnancy! Instead, you come home to find your husband diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma! The heartache and battle begin! Arden and Esther Allison share their story of Arden's seven-year long battle with cancer.

Announcer: Welcome to the podcast, Life to The Full, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.

Nancy Campbell: Hello, ladies! And I have to say, please forgive me!  I have never been late before in getting out a podcast especially for this podcast! Because this is going to be a very special one!

Colin and I came home the 11^th of January from our Above Rubies Retreat down in Panama. That was our winter retreat, and it was the most beautiful, beautiful retreat. Oh, well, I don’t know, they seem to be getting better and better. I think it is that so many, although there are lots of new people, many are coming back. They’ve got to know one another, and the comradeship is so wonderful.

The young people are getting to know one another more and more. There was such a great anointing of the Lord upon the young people and the children. It was so amazing. One night the anointing of the Lord came down and they couldn’t stop worshiping until 2 o’clock in the morning and praying for one another. It was so beautiful!

But anyway, I came home. We had it all arranged the next day. I was going to do a podcast with Arden and Esther. They are sitting here with me now. But unfortunately, instead of doing the podcast, my head hit the pillow, and I couldn’t get up!

For three days I couldn’t lift my head. I couldn’t even keep down water. So, I don’t know what happened to me. Then, of course, I’ve got this cough. I’m not right yet, but by faith we’re going ahead today even though we are late. Please forgive me, once again.

Esther and Arden are sitting here with me. Arden is Serene and Sam’s oldest son. He’s married to beautiful Esther. Want to say hi?

Arden: Hello, everyone.

Esther: Hi!

Arden: I was going to say when you said you’re never late on a podcast, but sometimes I can be late on editing your podcast!

Nancy: Well, right from the beginning of starting our podcast, Arden has been the one who sets our podcast up and has been with me in all of this. He edits them so he’s such a very big part of this. Thank you so much, Arden!

Arden: I can be blamed for the bad parts! [laughter]

Nancy: Today I want Arden and Esther to tell their story. They have such a powerful story to tell. Some of you know it, but most of you will not know it.

But let me start it off because it all started with Esther coming to Above Rubies as an Above Rubies helper. Amazing things happen when girls come to be Above Rubies helpers! Esther arrived, and it was my first time to meet her. She came all the way from Canada and her lovely parents brought her down with them.

It happened to be that the next night, it was Shabbat. Esther was reminding me about this just now. I had invited the Allison family over for Shabbat. We always like to have visitors at our Shabbat meal. Sometimes it’s family, sometimes it’s people who we want to introduce Shabbat to them, or friends we want to get together with. Sometimes it’s just the grandchildren.

This time, it was the Allisons. And I had no ulterior thought in my mind. [laughter from Arden and Esther]. They are giggling here.

Arden: I’m only laughing because it’s been a family joke. Maybe we haven’t mentioned it to you, but it’s been a family joke that you have started Above Rubies to get wives for your grandsons! [laughter]

Nancy: Which wasn’t in my mind at all, but it did happen! And it was more than Arden and Esther! They set the ball rolling.

Arden: I was the first.

Esther: And you swore you’d never marry a Rubies girl.

Arden: That’s the funny thing. Growing up, when I was younger, I’d get teased, and I swore I would never marry an Above Rubies girl. Never, ever, ever, ever!

Nancy: I know, because if you could know, there’s a season, you see. There was a season when all our grandsons were just little boys, real boys. They didn’t believe in showering, or most probably never even sleeping in bed. They were always out in the weather.

Arden: We were savages. Back then, girls had the cooties. We were young boys, and we made this pact that we’re never getting married, ever! I was lying. I knew it then. I knew it then that I was lying. I wanted to get married but with the group of savages, I was like, “No! I’m never getting married! I don’t want to!”

Esther: If you got married, definitely not an Above Rubies girl!

Nancy: And, of course, if you ever talked about girls, they’d want a bucket to vomit into!

Arden: Unfortunately, I was acting very mean to the Above Rubies girls.

Nancy: Oh, yes! In those days, these little boys, they’d find a snake, so they’d come into the office to scare them. They’d come in with spiders. They would come in, and they used to tie them up. They did all these terrible things to the Above Rubies girls. But then, wow! Suddenly they just started to grow up a little.

That night, Arden told me, he said, “Going home, my mom says to me, ‘I hope you could marry a girl like that, Arden.’”

Nancy: “What did you say, Arden?”

Arden: Yeah, we were driving home that Shabbat night after we hung out with you guys for a few hours, three or four hours. We were driving home, and Mom looked at me and said, “I wish you’d fall in love with a girl like that, Arden!”

I don’t know why she said that, because I hadn’t fallen in love with any girl. [laughter] But she’s like, “I wish you’d fall in love with a girl like that.” I’m like, “Mom, don’t worry. I already have my own ideas.”

Nancy: He was already thinking. He’d already seen Esther. But guess how old he was? He was only 16! Help! [laughter]

Arden: I was just 16, just about to turn 17.

Nancy: So, Arden didn’t take long to wait around. He decided, “Yes, that’s the girl I want to marry.” When Arden believes it’s time to do something, he does it!

Arden: I was raised that you don’t get into a relationship. I’m glad I was. There’s no absent-minded, just dating. I wanted to get married. I wanted that life. I wanted to be a responsible man. When I found the woman, I was like, “Man, this girl loves the Lord, she’s responsible, she’s smart as a tack.” [laughter]

I wanted to get to know this girl more and explore the possibility of marriage. I talked to her for a little bit in the office. You were there. And then I started emailing her dad. That was an adventure! He was grilling me over a whole array of topics and matters, especially theological and spiritual. It was definitely an experience!

Nancy: Yes! They weren’t expecting their daughter to come down, and this happen. It was furthest from their minds.

Esther: I was going to say, to bring it back a little bit more, I was raised in China (and adopted by my parents in Chiona). My mother received Above Rubies magazines in China. She loved them. They changed her mind on a big family, on homeschooling, on mothering, because she wasn’t raised like that at all.

So, I grew up reading Above Rubies magazines from the time I was a little girl. Interestingly enough, somehow it was always one of my dreams to become a Rubies girl. Even on my homework papers, one of my goals was to be an Above Rubies girl. I did not know, obviously, that I was going to find my husband there, in the end! But yeah, I had a passion for Above Rubies from when I was a little, little girl.

Nancy: And Esther came, knowing every single person in the family. She had known all about them, and knew who they were, right from a little girl, which is quite amazing. But at 16, Arden wanted more than a girlfriend. He was never interested in that. He was interested in marriage.

So, Esther’s parents were, “Wow! Help! We’d better come down and meet this guy!” So, they had to come down. Of course, when they met Arden, they couldn’t say no.

Esther: They loved Arden.

Nancy: They just had to delay things a little bit. Then, of course, Arden began to frequent our meal table. It was quite interesting.

Arden: The funny thing is, back then I did a lot of water hauling because Mom and Dad’s water was connected to . . . They didn’t have a spring, didn’t have a well at that point. Because the spring kept on drying up in the summer. In the winter it was fine, but in the summertime, I had to haul water.

That was toward the end of the summer. She came in October. Obviously, it’s fall by then. But I was still hauling water. It only took 30 minutes to fill the water tank, but I’d turn it off, and let it drain out so I could have another 30 minutes! [laughter]

Nancy: Oh! [laughter]

Arden: They made me come and help in the office with Esther and you.

Esther: I remember one time you called for Above Rubies helpers. It was only me at the time. There was a new magazine that had just come out. I was the only Ruby girl there, so you asked everybody on the land to come and help. Arden was the only one who actually ended up showing. We spent the entire afternoon together, in almost complete silence, working on Above Rubies magazines.

Arden: If I could go back to that young guy that I was, I would be like, “Man! What an idiot!” [laughing]

Esther: No, we were both nervous!

Arden: Not for falling in love with her, but. . .

Esther: No, we were just both nervous.

Nancy: But that’s all about falling in love! It’s all part of it. It’s all so wonderful!

So, Arden would come for supper. He had to eat rather strangely. He could only eat with one hand! [Esther laughing]

Arden: Yeah. Granddad always made fun of me because we were always holding hands. So, I’d eat with my left hand, and I’m right-handed!

Nancy: That was a wonderful, great time, and so exciting for all of us! We all had to be patient and wait until they were both 18, and the beautiful wedding day came. That was such a glorious day.

We all knew that Arden and Esther were going off on their honeymoon, hoping for a honeymoon baby. We were all hoping for a honeymoon baby! We were all excited about it. We all thought, “This is what’s going to happen!” Everyone was so excited. But that wasn’t what quite happened.

Esther: No, we both come from families with a dozen children. We both desperately wanted to have a big family. We both were pretty certain it was going to happen soon, as you know. Your parents are pretty fertile, and so are mine, so we thought it’s really unlikely that it won’t happen. But God had different plans.

Nancy: Yes, so you can start telling the story.

Arden: Just to put it in perspective, we met in October of 2014 here at your house. We started our relationship. Knowing her father, I got permission to start a relationship with her, talk to her, call her. We were in a relationship for all 2015 and then we got married in February 2016.

Nancy: That was when she had to go back home to Canada.

Arden: That was more like long-distance. I visited her a couple of times and she visited me. She wrote the majority of the letters. We were emailing, texting, calling, and a few letters. A few for me, and dozens from her!

Esther: We got married in February of 2016. Five weeks . . .

Arden: Blissful. Incredible. Wonderful.

Esther: Five weeks after our wedding day, we went in for a routine check-up for you. Arden had had some swollen lymph nodes a couple months back. But we figured it was because it was the cold and flu season. Plus, weddings are wonderful, but they come with an aspect of stress and busyness and beginning a new life.

We figured it was a minor infection that would go away. But because it stuck around for a few months, we asked the doctors to check it out. They were like, “Ok, this has been around for a couple of months.”

Arden: He immediately said, “You might want to get checked out by an oncologist because you might have Hodgkin’s lymphoma.” I was like, “What’s Hodgkin’s lymphoma?”

Esther: Both of us had no idea. You were freshly 18. Neither one of us had any idea what that was.

Arden: I didn’t know that much about cancer. I thought old people got it; unhealthy people got it. I didn’t know anything about it. That’s when we were like, “What are we going to do?”

You guys who are listening, we have not told this to anyone. Family members know this, and a few other people that family members told them. We’ve talked to other people personally in a one-on-one conversation. This is the first time we’ve really, really gone public about it. It’s been six years now, no seven years.

Nancy: Seven years, isn’t it?

Arden: Eight years, coming up on our wedding day. It’s almost a seven-year journey of battling cancer.

Esther: Yeah. Needless to say, we were both a little shell-shocked. Both not sure how to process or continue from there. My grandmother had died of cancer, and your grandfather several years before.

My grandmother used conventional treatment. You know, you see and hear horror stories of conventional therapy, so both of us were very hesitant to go into it, especially being so newly married.

We all know it greatly decreases fertility, or at least it’s known to. We didn’t want to take that chance straight off. The doctors assured us that Hodgkin’s lymphoma is extremely slow growing. In fact, if you’re going to get cancer, it’s the type you want the most.

Arden: Exactly. Yes.

Esther: Because you have so much time. We thought, if we have the time, if it’s slow growing, we might as well try some natural treatments.

Arden: That was what was going through my mind as well. The doctor told me, “Hey, if you’re going to have cancer, this is the one you want, because people your age . . .”

Esther: Almost none of them die.

Arden: “Young adults your age, they all beat it.” With that in mind, we were like, “OK, what are the options?” With my mom being an extreme health freak, and I didn’t care about health. I didn’t appreciate having a healthy mom and a healthy lifestyle. Back then Taco Bell was my life. I went to Taco Bell all the time.

Nancy: But you were blessed to be brought up healthy.

Arden: I was brought up healthy, ate healthy meals at home. But when I was out and about, bad food was incredible. But that said, we decided to go and do natural treatment in Mexico, alternative treatment in Mexico. We were there for one month, right?

Esther: Right. One month.

Arden: It went from stage one, seeming normal, to stage four pretty quick.

Esther: I would say stage three. At that point, we left. We came home in July. It was about two months from when we went to Mexico initially to where the point where he was at, stage four was about two months. It accelerated really, really quickly, and really, really abruptly. Neither one of us was expecting that. All the doctors had assured us that was not going to happen.

Arden: We came back from Mexico. I felt normal when I first got there. Then during the treatment, in the middle of the month that we were there, I started getting night sweats. Just didn’t feel right. I was lethargic, going through life in slow motion. Poor Esther. The whole journey, she remembers it more than I do. On the really hard days. I was kind of not there.

Esther: Also, because it initially started around your neck, your lymph nodes around your neck swelled up really, really, big.

Nancy: I’ll never forget the night you arrived home. In this room, where we were having the prayer meetings, all the cousins were here. Of course, we all expected you to come home healed from this great, incredible natural therapy. Then they looked at you, and all these growths had gotten so much bigger. They all began to cry. We could not believe it. It wasn’t what we expected to happen, was it?

Arden: No. It was not.

Esther: You got steadily worse.

Arden: The doctors were telling my wife and my mom that, “Hey, this is fine.”

Esther: “This is normal. This is the way your cancer should react. This is just reacting to the treatment.”

Arden: “The dying cancer cells are causing a little bit of inflammation and it’s going to go down.”

Esther: By August of 2016, your parents had had it. I think they were like, “This is enough. We’re not listening to those doctors anymore.” We went and got him different scans from a different doctor.

Arden: At Vanderbilt.

Nancy: But in between that too, we decided that we would pray. Remember? It was actually three months that every single night of the week, we’d come together as a family. It was so wonderful the way the family rallied.

By “the family,” I mean the family, right down to the little babies. Everyone came. The cousins would gather round Arden. They would pray over him. I can remember them praying and praying. We’d sing the songs of the Lord. And we watched him get worse! In fact, it was so bad that we couldn’t. . . We weren’t seeing anything for our prayers.

I actually put Scriptures, healing Scriptures, all around the whole room. We could walk around and pray over those Scriptures, and pray those Scriptures, and hang onto them. We had nothing else to hang onto. All we watched were these huge tumors get bigger and bigger, and Arden become less and less.

Arden: The crazy part with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, it doesn’t work like a normal tumor. It’s essentially a blood cancer.

Esther: It’s a blood cancer.

Arden: It causes your lymph nodes to be tumors. They swell up so much. Yeah, with all that said, and all the prayers, and the family support we got, I’m literally here by the grace of God.

Esther: In retrospect, over those few months, we didn’t realize at the time, but your body was shutting down. It was shutting down, and you were dying.

Arden: Yeah, like you were saying before, when we went and got those scans, they called us up immediately. Immediately after.

Nancy: Because you were having things in your heart, wasn’t he?

Esther: There was fluid around his heart.

Nancy: When he had to get to the hospital. . .

Esther: They said, “You have to go NOW!”

Arden: That night, we went to Vanderbilt Adult Emergency Room.

Esther: We were admitted immediately.

Arden: Yep. Generally, sometimes you’ll get cut. I’ve been to the Emergency Room so many times in my life for cuts, knife gashes, you know. I was a dare devil and a crazy boy. You have to wait 15, 20, 30 minutes sometimes. This was immediately. I walked in, immediately put me on a table.

My wife was sitting right next to me, holding my hand. There were droves of students, nurses, doctors, all these people. Doctors came in and told my wife that night, “This is the worst case of Hodgkin’s lymphoma we’ve ever seen. If he survives, you guys probably won’t have children. His lymph nodes will never get back to normal size.”

Esther: Basically, they were like, “If you don’t do chemo, you will die. So, you must do chemo right now.”

Arden: We were terrified of it. That was a big fear over my wife, and my life at the time. Like chemo terrified us. Right during that time, I know I didn’t. We had this peace about it. God opened that door, and we did not fear. That was the door that God had opened. It was definitely hard on my wife at that time because she had to face a few months being married.

Esther: Well, yeah, I was facing widowhood in the first year of my marriage. It was a very real possibility.

Arden: Her family’s in Canada.

Nancy: And you come home from your honeymoon, just thinking of a baby. And now you’re facing a husband who may not live.

Esther: Exactly.

Nancy: It was torture, wasn’t it?

Esther: Yeah. It was pretty much hell on earth. There’s not much worse that I could imagine. I’ve got to be honest. But by the grace of God, chemotherapy worked.

Arden: They started me on heavy-dose chemotherapy. Also, just to paint a picture here, when we got married, I was like 175 pounds. When I got admitted to Vanderbilt in August at the ICU, I was close to 125 pounds.

Esther: That was literally a period of six, seven months. Six to seven months.

Arden: I was on crazy, crazy diets the doctors in Mexico put me on.

Nancy: And I was juicing for you every night.

Arden: Mom was giving me all sorts of supplements and mushroom powders, and all this crazy stuff.

Nancy: Oh, I know.

Esther: If it was natural, we tried it.

Nancy: I could see it was the hardest thing for him to get down this juice. It was the most powerful juice, because I was going to get you well!

Arden: Jalapenos, tomatoes, carrots, everything!

Nancy: Yes, and okra leaves, and . . .

Arden: At that time too, I didn’t have a love for health. I developed this love for health over the years of the treatment I had. I had to actually buy into it myself. Like my mom has been bought into it, so I had to develop a love for it. At that time, I didn’t. I just wanted to get better! 

They started me on heavy chemotherapy. I lost my hair. I think I felt so bad that I didn’t feel any of the side effects from chemotherapy, besides hair loss. I actually was feeling better from taking the chemotherapy.

Nancy: Because you’d been so bad, yes.

Esther: All you did was sleep.

Arden: Yes, so I actually had more energy because it was beating down. It was taking away the large masses around my neck and underarms. My underarms had baseballs underneath both arms.

Nancy: The interesting thing is that none of us could ever imagine how you got it, because you were such a healthy specimen. But do you think it was that spraying you were doing when you . . . Lots of theories, I guess.

Arden: I have a lot of theories. But I did have to say Round Up. I dumped it all over my shoulders and neck in an accident when I was 17.

Nancy: It spilled all over you. And you were out and didn’t get back for how long?

Arden: I was out on a cell tower maintenance crew. Esther and I were dating. This was in the summer of 2015. I had a backpack sprayer with glyphosate. The lid must not have been on tight when I jumped over a fence. You know when you land, you kind of brace your knees and bend over a little bit. The lid popped off, and the glyphosate poured over my neck and shoulders.

Nancy: Oh boy. Yeah.

Esther: Another theory, because, honestly, no one really knows, is that Epstein-Barr virus has actually been known to mutate into Hodgkin’s lymphoma. His bloodwork had said he had had Epstein-Barr virus. So, it’s possible that’s also what did it. But no one knows exactly. There’s another theory.

Arden: Really, I used to churn. My brain would just go around, especially when I was feeling better. In the fall, a month after the heavy chemo, I used to churn. “Why? What if? Why? Why me? Why me?”

Over the years, I really got to the point where I was like, “Why not me? Why not me?” Because I’m kind of frustrated with myself because I feel like I wasted a lot of time, sitting down in self-pity, and wallowing in, “I’m sick. I can’t do this. I shouldn’t do that. Oh, no, life won’t be good until I get better.” I put those requirements on myself, like, “Hey! I’m going to be really happy when I’m cancer-free.”

I had to get to the point, even though I got to this point before I was cancer-free. I had to get to the point where “Hey! No, I’m happy now. Cancer does not define me. Sickness does not define me. Yes, I have cancer, but I am a man of God. I am not going to let this define and rule over my life like this.” I had to get to that point.

Esther: For the record, though, he was one of the most optimistic people I have ever, ever, ever seen go through anything like this. If you asked him how he was, it didn’t matter what time of day or what time or night, or he’s actually doing, he’s always great! Honestly, he never ever got down.

Nancy: I will vouch for that! He was always great and always had a smile on his face.

Esther: I was going to say, he never . . . There were very, very, very few laws, and I rarely even saw them. He was always very upbeat, very optimistic, very positive. Actually, to this day, I’m baffled by how that works!

Nancy: Yes, yes. They really went for it when they first found you at stage four. But then, of course, it was a seven-year fight. It didn’t just go!

Arden: After the big heavy doses for a few months, I went to low-dose chemotherapy, which I reacted really well with. Over the next couple of years, I had a couple of clean scans. Then it would come back. It was very aggressive. I’d reacted well.

Nancy: This is interesting now. They say, “Oh, well. This is the one you want to get.” But it wasn’t like that for you.

Arden: After studying, because I really poured a lot of man-hours into studying cancer and stuff like that. When a young person has cancer, it’s a lot tougher than when an older person has cancer.

Nancy: Really?

Arden: The immune system is tougher, so in order to overcome a younger person, the cancer has to be stronger. But an older person, like I’ve known several older people who have cancer (that’s not a blanket statement). I know that some older people have cancer, and it can be really tough and take them out fast and be really aggressive as well. But I do know lots of older people that have cancer, and it’s been dormant in a way. Not dormant, but it’s not super aggressive like mine was. There can be various types of cancer. It’s wild.

Nancy: Not one’s the same.

Esther: No, no.

Arden: No, they’re all different. It’s crazy. I didn’t even know how much cancer there was out there until I started getting treatment. Another thing, when I was in the ICU in the adult side, since I was 18. . .

Esther: Just 18.

Arden: I was 18 on December 15 in 2015, about to turn 19. But they gave me the opportunity. They said, “Hey, do you want to go to the children’s hospital?” I looked around, and the adult side was kind of morbid. It was kind of sad.

Esther: Yeah, but honestly, I think even more than that, was the main reason, we were trying to save his fertility. We wanted children.

Arden: Yes, that was the main reason.

Esther: We really, really, really wanted children. If there was a chance of saving his fertility, it would be in the children’s hospital, not the adult hospital. That’s why we opted for the children’s hospital.

Nancy: Yes, that was the best facility.

Arden: That was the main reason. The other reason was the adult side was kind of sad. But we went to the children’s side. That’s where I was receiving the majority of my chemo, like the lower doses. That’s where I finished out, on the children’s side as well.

Esther: Well, we went through seven years of ups and downs. We tried natural therapy a couple more times, actually, just to see how it would work, especially because his body was doing better.

Arden: In Arizona.

Esther: Mainly in Arizona.

Nancy: Oh, you went to some other clinics too, didn’t you?

Esther: We went to two other clinics in Arizona to try to see what we could do. In the end we always ended up going back to Vanderbilt. Conventional treatment worked best for him and his cancer. In 2022 . . .

Arden: Spring of 2022.

Esther: He had had clear scans. The thing is, like he had said, we had had at least two clear scans before, but his cancer kept on coming back. The doctors at Vanderbilt recommended that we do a stem cell transplant because sometimes there’s cancer on scans that can’t be picked up because it’s too small. But left alone, obviously it will grow and destroy the body again. But if you do a stem cell transplant, the idea is that you . . .

Arden: Give yourself a clean slate.

Esther: Yes. So, they give you doses of chemo so heavy that it wipes everything in your body, both good and bad.

Arden: That was something that we knew was on the radar from the beginning. They said, “Hey, this is the plan. We’re going to do this, do this, do this, and then stem cell transplant.” I’d heard so many crazy stories of stem cell transplants over the years. Esther and I were like, we don’t know if we want to do that. But then, in 2019 we had our baby.

Nancy: Shall we just stop here? We’re going to come back next session and find out what happened about that. So, you’ve got to wait for it, because it was the biggest, hugest decision. I can remember, oh goodness, even your mom just agonizing, agonizing.

We’ll tell you. We haven’t finished the story yet. We’re going to close out here, and we’ve got a couple more sessions yet with Arden and Esther. Be tuning in for next week, OK?

“Lord God, we want to come to You today, thanking You for your faithfulness. Here we are, talking on the other end of seeing Your great faithfulness, Lord God, as we continue to tell the story of all that You have done, we want to give You thanks.

“Lord, we want to bless and pray for any who are listening who have any kind of cancer. We pray that, Lord God, You will come through in miraculous ways. Show the path, Lord, for each one, we pray in the precious Name of Jesus.

“Bless each family today, Lord God, in their homes, and in this coming year. In the Name of Jesus, amen.”

Arden: Amen.

Blessings from Nancy Campbell

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