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Friends United
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December 2011
A Direct Recipient of Friends' Mission Efforts
By Linda Brindle
I was sitting in a doctor’s office in Goldsboro, North Carolina. A doctor I had met only one time before that day was talking to me when I heard, “You have cancer.” I thought, I’m dying. Thank goodness for the life insurance — it will pay for the house so that David, my husband, won’t have quite so hard a time making ends meet without my income.
I was very calm while talking to the doctor. I could hardly believe what I was hearing. I had recently become aware that something was going on in my body that wasn’t right. I was working 40 hours a week at a pediatric therapy clinic as a receptionist and 20 hours a week at Sears, selling mattresses. I had been unemployed for a while and needed the hours to help catch up on bills. Now I had cancer.
The doctor told me I had ovarian cancer. He had already walked my tests and paperwork across the street to an oncologist, Dr. Kasbari. I was amazed! Couldn’t he have just faxed it? “You will like Dr. Kasbari,” he said. “He is a young man, and is a very good oncologist.”
I went back to work. Annette, the office manager, and Judy, an insurance specialist, immediately asked, “What did you find out?”
I said, “I have cancer, and I already have an oncologist.”
“What is his name?”
I had written it down as I have a terrible memory for names, so I had to look at my note to find it — Kasbari.
“What do you know about him?” they asked.
“All I know is that he is an oncologist, and my doctor said he is good!”
Judy went online to see what she could find out: “He is a graduate of Dartmouth, Yale and … Wilmington College, Wilmington, Ohio!”
The staff knew that my daughter lives in Wilmington, is a graduate of Wilmington College and is curator of the Quaker Heritage Center on the college campus. I had occasionally taken time off to go see her and our granddaughter, and I regularly inflicted granddaughter pictures on them.
We laughed about what a small world it is. Dr. Kasbari was a graduate of Wilmington College — a small liberal arts college in the Midwest where I had lots of connections. How amazing that I would have a doctor in North Carolina who was a graduate of Wilmington College!
Carmen, an occupational therapist, came into the office. “Is Dr. Kasbari your doctor?”
When I said yes, she told me that he was her neighbor and that she liked him very much.
“You will like him, too. He has young children and his sister visited him from Palestine last summer. He is a graduate of the Friends Boys School in Ramallah.”
I was blown away. Having grown up among Friends, I had heard about Friends Boys School most of my life. Monthly meetings and yearly meetings of which I had been a member were members of Friends United Meeting. FUM, and assessments paid to FUM, help support the schools in Ramallah. In the past I had been a member of the United Society of Friends Women, and the USFW regularly supports the Friends Schools in Ramallah. On occasion David and I had sent money to FUM for specific projects at the Friends Schools in Ramallah. Now I had a doctor who had graduated from the Ramallah Friends Schools! I had never thought I would be a direct beneficiary of a Friends mission.
Carmen was right — I liked Dr. Kasbari immediately upon meeting him. We laughed about our mutual connections at Wilmington College. We played the “I know _______, do you know _______?” game, and found that we had several common acquaintances. In addition to this, he had the ability to explain clearly what was happening in my body. Did you know that the paper sheets on the examination table make great blackboards? Dr. Kasbari wrote words I needed to know and remember on those sheets. He made diagrams to help me understand what was happening. It all helped me to not despair as I learned how to live with cancer.
On November 16, I had surgery and learned that I had both ovarian and uterine cancer, as well as spots on my liver. I had stage-four cancer.
Ruth, our daughter, came to North Carolina for Thanksgiving. She wanted to meet my doctor, to be able to ask him questions and to get acquainted with him.
“When did you graduate?” Ruth asked Dr. Kasbari.
“1995. When were you there?”
“I was a freshman the fall of 1995.”
“Do you know _________?”
“Yes, do you know_________?”
They must have spent 10 or 15 minutes talking about Wilmington College. Dr. Kasbari told her he had received an excellent education there.
“I wish I had known that I could major in History instead of pre-med and still get a medical degree,” he said. “Much of what I learned in pre-med at Wilmington College were things I had in classes later when I was in medical school.”
Finally, we began talking about my treatments.
Dr. Kasbari said, “Your surgery went very well. Here are some things you can expect …”
After seeing his full name on his name badge, Ruth interrupted, “You are Samer!”
“Yes …”
“I have heard a lot about Samer, I just didn’t know he was you! One of my best friends was ________.”
Dr. Kasbari had dated Ruth’s friend’s older sister through much of his time at Wilmington College.
We did finish talking about my treatment, and I think I am correct that our hearts were all lighter after that session.
Since then I have had eight rounds of chemotherapy. We have moved from North Carolina to Ohio, where we stayed with Ruth and her family before moving to Muncie, Indiana, where David is pastor at Friends Memorial Church.
Each step of the way I have had excellent doctors who have given me excellent care. I have had other doctors as we moved to Ohio and Indiana who have been blessings to me. I have received help from friends and Friends. I have been prayed for by Friends, Catholics, Episcopalians, members of the United Church of Christ, Baptists and friends of no denomination. People I have never met have put me on their prayer lists.
I am now in remission. I know that the prayers prayed on my behalf have had a lot to do with my health and healing. I know that there is an 80 percent chance that my cancer will come back, but I have learned experientially that God will send people to help me through whatever happens to me.
The bread I sent out upon the waters (Ecclesiastes 11:1)when I was sending monetary support to Friends Schools in Ramallah all those years ago has been returned to me, multiplied many times over. I never thought I would be the direct recipient of Friends’ mission efforts. Thank you, Friends, for providing help for the Friends Schools in Ramallah. You have directly contributed to my recovery from cancer. God has been so very good to me. Amen. It is so.