Isaiah 6:8

December 22, 2025

Tomorrow, I officially begin the T-Cell process.

A PICC line will be placed into my arm, a quiet but necessary gateway. It will allow my T-Cells to make their way back into me and give my care team access to administer whatever medication/fluids/blood/plasma I may need while I’m hospitalized. Unremarkable on paper, yet, it marks a turning point.

I’ll spend Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the first day of Kwanza receiving chemotherapy. On December 29th, my T-Cells will be infused back into my body. After that, I’ll remain in the hospital for roughly a week to ten days, monitored closely as my body adjusts. Once discharged, I’ll be checked daily for several weeks before I’m finally released to return home.

Even then, this isn’t finished.

The study requires that I return to New York City every twenty-one days for checkups, injections, and diagnostics for the next two years.

This is not a short yes.

It’s a sustained one.

Which brings me to the question that has been sitting with me longer than the dates, longer than the logistics:

Why am I doing this study?

Not what I’m doing. Not how. But why I am choosing to step into a clinical study after everything my body has already endured. After the infusions. The radiation. The scans. The biopsies. The protocols that worked for a while and then didn’t. The treatments that carried hope and exacted a cost.

The answer isn’t simple, but it is clear.

Because science only moves forward when people are willing to step into the unknown.

Every treatment I’ve received exists because someone before me agreed to be counted. Every option placed in front of me was shaped by data gathered from bodies that bore the weight of uncertainty. Cancer care doesn’t advance through theory alone. It advances through participation. Through patients who allow their experience to become evidence.

This study isn’t just about me. It’s about the community of science, medicine, and patients that stretches backward and forward in time. It’s about turning maybe into knowledge. About helping clinicians ask better questions, refine treatments, reduce harm, and open doors for those who will walk this path after me.

If what I’ve already endured can help shape something better, something clearer, something kinder for the next person, then saying yes feels necessary.

I didn’t arrive at this decision lightly.

I arrived here through nearly a year of treatment and persistence. Through sitting in infusion chairs longer than anyone ever wants to. Through radiation that marked my body and fatigue that settled into my bones. Through biopsies and scans that reminded me how fragile progress can be. Through waiting rooms filled with children, elderly patients, mothers and fathers, all carrying stories heavier than they should have to hold.

Watching them changed me.

Suffering stopped being abstract. It became communal. Shared. Unavoidable.

That’s when an older question began to surface, one I’ve known for years but heard differently now:

“Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”

Isaiah 6:8 comes after the prophet is undone by holiness. After he confronts his own limits and brokenness. After grace meets him exactly where he is. Only then does God ask the question. And Isaiah responds without conditions or guarantees:

“Here am I. Send me.”

Isaiah doesn’t know the outcome. He doesn’t know how his message will be received. He doesn’t know the cost. He only knows that he has been changed, and that change demands response.

That’s what this season has revealed to me.

My calling cannot stop at reflection alone. It has to move. It has to contribute. It has to step beyond documenting the experience and into offering something tangible to the world beyond myself.

Cancer has reshaped my understanding of purpose. God has reshaped my understanding of availability. My prayers are simpler now. My ambitions quieter. I’m less interested in control and more committed to faithfulness. Less focused on explanations and more attentive to response.

Participating in this study is my yes.

It is offering my body as data. My endurance as part of a larger story. My experience as one small thread in the fabric of scientific progress that depends on trust, courage, and community.

This has to mean more than a blog that informs, reflects, or occasionally rants about Christmas songs or provides an outlet for my wandering thoughts. Those words matter, but they are not enough for this moment. The trials placed in front of me were not random. They were formative. They were shaping me toward something that asks for more than commentary.

They were asking for commitment.

Here am I.

Not because I am finished with this fight.

Not because I am fearless.

Not because I know how this ends.

But because science needs participants, faith requires response, and calling sometimes looks like staying in the process long enough for something good to emerge.

The question was asked long ago, but it still stands.

Whom shall I send?

At this moment, in this body, in this season, my answer remains:

Here am I. Send me.

I’m deeply grateful to my friend Quentin, who brought this verse back to me when I needed it most. Sometimes calling doesn’t arrive as a revelation. Sometimes it comes as a quiet reminder from someone who sees you clearly and knows when to place the right words in front of you.

This one did exactly that.