Speaking in an interview on “The Jennifer Hudson Show” with podcast host Jennifer Hudson, 1984 Olympic gold medal figure skater Scott Hamilton described how being diagnosed with cancer brought him closer to God, helping him develop in his Christian faith. He also explained how he saw God through his miraculous recovery from the cancerous tumors.
He told Hudson how his battle with cancer began and said it “ignited” his Christian faith, saying, “2004 was the first brain tumor. It just ignited my faith, it was one of those things.” He continued, explaining how he and his wife immediately prayed when they got the bad news, saying, “I told my wife, [and] without skipping a beat, she just took my hands and started to pray, and it was the most powerful — I’ve had a lot of big moments, that was probably the biggest.”
Continuing, he spoke about having to go back to doctors six years after the first tumor was removed, with the second being much harder and taking nine surgeries to get rid of. Then, six years after that, it returned again, and he said he listened to advice from above on how to handle it.
He said, “There’s a pattern emerging here,” Hamilton joked. “I came back again, and this time, I just felt like they’re giving me a surgical option and a medical option. All I felt in the back of my head was ‘Get strong.’ That was it. Just ‘Get strong.’”
He continued, explaining how he listened to that advice despite the doctors’ confusion, saying, “I had no idea what that meant, and they said, ‘Well, what do you want to do, surgery or [the] medical option?’ I go, ‘I’m going to go home, and I’m going to get strong.’ And they go, ‘What does that look like?’ And I said, ‘I have no idea. I’m just feeling this.’”
Then, explaining how it turned out well despite his atypical approach, Horton said, “I went in for the scan, and they said, ‘You’re going to get good news.’ And I go, ‘What is it?’ They go, ‘It didn’t grow.’ I was like, ‘Okay,’” Hamilton recalled. “I went back again three months later, ‘You’re going to get good news.’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘It shrunk 45%.’ And I said to the surgeon, I go, ‘Can you explain that?’ And he goes, ‘God.’ Good enough for me.”
Continuing, he explained, “And then it shrunk again, then it grew, and then it grew, and it shrunk, and it grew, and then Covid happened, and I got tired of fighting the medical system, so I just said, you know what, this thing doesn’t exist. It’s gone.”
Now, with the tumor not having returned in half a decade, he’s trying to help others fight cancer as well. He said, “Right now, I’m just trying to really be productive and be as busy as I can, living as totally normal a life as I can. Be a good citizen and fund cancer research.” He continued, “I started a foundation called the Cancer Alliance for Research Education Survivorship, and it’s amazing. We’ve been able to fund research. We created a mentorship program called Fourth Angel where we pair newly diagnosed patients with survivors. We created chemocare.com and now it’s all about research.”
By Erik Drost – https://www.flickr.com/photos/edrost88/52590645690/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=127104804