​PET stands for Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
One thing we learned early on when Kim was diagnosed with cancer is that cancer cells use sugar as an energy source; cancer cells come alive when there is sugar to be had. A PET/CT machine uses this against the cancer cells to get them to show themselves.

When someone goes for a PET/CT scan, a special type of sugar is combined with a safe radioactive component to create a tracer. When this combination of sugar and radioactive material is injected into a person, it is taken up by the cancer cells and emits a signal that these scanning machines recognize and map.  How strong the signal is, or the uptake in the cancer cells, can tell the doctor reading the scan how prevalent the cancer is in any area of the body.
 
During Kim’s cancer journey, she had five of these scans. My notes from the follow-up meetings with Kim's oncologist are peppered with phrases like, “strong uptake, little uptake, she lit up here, dim resolution in that spot, more brightness since last time.”
 
PET/CT Scans can also show how the tumor or lesions are changing in terms of size and shape, and most importantly, where exactly they are in the body.
 
When Kim went for her scans, she would have to take it easy in the hours leading up to the scan, so her body was relaxed. She would fill out a brief questionnaire. This is when she would leave me to go to the exam room, where she would get injected with the tracer. She would then wait for about an hour for it to work throughout her body, ensuring no cancer cell clusters were missed, and then go for the scan, taking about 20-30 minutes. These new scanners dramatically decrease the length of time it takes to do the scan.
 
The results would usually be ready after a day or two, and we would schedule a time to meet with her oncologist to understand the results and together make the next step treatment decisions.

Right now in BC, we only have four of these scanners, with none in the Fraser Valley Region. Together, we want to bring two new scanners to the new Surrey/Cloverdale BC Cancer Centre. 

Today is a difficult day; this is a difficult post to share.
 
For myself and the rest of Kim’s family, it is one of the most difficult days of the year, as it is the day that Kim died. I have never written about this day, and I rarely speak about this final chapter of Kim’s life, but I would like to share some of that season with you today. 
 
The day that Kim passed, Good Friday 2021, was a peaceful day. Kim had already been sedated for more than a week, and as a family, we had by this time talked about that instead of “waiting for Kim to die”, we needed to learn to “live alongside her” during these final days of her life.
 
In the first days after Kim lost consciousness and was kept sedated because of the immense pain she was suffering, we feared leaving the room or leaving the house, worried that Kim would pass when we were gone from her side. Being almost driven to the point of exhaustion in our tense waiting and angst, and knowing that Kim had already lived more than a month longer than anyone predicted, we knew that simply waiting was not the way to honor this final page of her life. And so, we changed our disposition from “waiting” to “living alongside.” We knew that Kim would pass when her body was ready, and not a moment earlier or later. And so, we learned to live alongside her. I came and went from our bedroom where Kim lay sleeping as I would most days. I would talk to her, sit with her, read in her presence, and when family would come to be with her, I would go for my walks, get some fresh air, go for groceries, and all the somewhat regular things someone does in a day. Her parents would come daily to be with Kim, and her siblings and in-laws every couple of days, to sit and be in her sacred presence, straddling the line between earth and heaven.
 
When April 2 came, we lived the day as we had the past week. It was an especially quiet day. Her sister-in-law came in the afternoon to be with Kim. At around 9 pm, I began to get ready for bed. I had been using the guest bathroom for the last few weeks so as to keep our bedroom quieter and not disturb people visiting with Kim. I brushed my teeth and changed into my pajamas. I walked slowly and softly through the quiet hallway towards our bedroom, reflecting on the peaceful day. As I walked into our room and around her bed, I noticed something different about her breathing. It was shallow and slower than usual. I sat down in the chair beside Kim. I held her right hand in my own and stroked her temple and forehead with my left hand. She breathed in and out peacefully, and then her breathing paused for ten seconds. Another slow breath in and out, and then a longer pause of thirty seconds. I knew now that she was leaving, stepping across the threshold. A final breath, in and out, and then, silence. I waited. I counted to sixty. I waited.
Kim was gone. I kissed her lips and forehead one last time.
 
It was 9:30 pm when I called family to tell them Kim was gone, and it was quickly decided to meet at our house to see Kim and be in her presence one last time. We carried Kim downstairs and laid her on the couch. We gathered around her in the living room to spend a short time sharing, praying, and reading Scripture, saying one last good-bye to someone we all knew was already gone, already rejoicing face-to-face with her Savior over her race well-lived.
 
At around midnight, women from the funeral home came to the house to receive Kim’s body. Myself, along with Kim’s brothers and their wives, watched in vigil as Kim was taken out of our house for the final time.
 
Kim’s final chapter of life, her final months, were filled with a lot of pain and suffering, but there were also incredible moments of peace and joy. Amazing times of blessing with family and friends, words spoken, impacts and legacies shared, and much love felt. As painful as it is, it is a blessing to be able to leave this world with time to say all of your goodbyes and to leave nothing left unsaid.
 
There was a lot of suffering in those months and weeks, but on the final night, and really that last week, there was only peace. People who came and went from our house during that time have spoken or written to me about an overwhelming sense of peace within our home. I can honestly say that had nothing to do with me, but it was all Kim. For nine weeks, from early February to that first week in April, Kim really straddled the line between earth and heaven, one foot in each, and it was she who brought that courage, peace, and even times of joy and levity into our home. There was truly a sacredness in those moments when we sat with her one-on-one, talked with her, rubbed her feet, and just sat in her presence while she slept. It was the hardest thing we all went through, witnessing what Kim was going through, and it has left its impact on all of our lives, but as time has gone by, we have all come to appreciate what a unique and special time that was, that Kim gave us. There was nothing warm and fuzzy about that time; it was not the “romantic ideal” that we may hope for at the end of life, often portrayed in movies or books, not at all, but it was incredibly sacred. Difficult, stressful, and dark, but always a light, always still a sense of peace. A deep abiding.
 
In the end, Kim slid away from this life at 9:30pm on April 2, 2021. Slowly, methodically, peacefully–just as she had lived her life.

In preparation for launching this upcoming fundraising campaign, along with it being five years since Kim passed, my wife, Carrie, and I re-watched Kim’s memorial. I remember vividly, back in September 2021, walking out of the sanctuary after the memorial and thinking about how proud I was of Kim and to have been her husband for 13 years. That feeling remains true today whenever I think of her.
 
In watching her memorial again, I was struck at how consistently everyone spoke about Kim and who she was to them. They spoke of her strong personality, her sense of humour, her wisdom, her servant and generous heart, and her down-to-earth practicality. They also spoke about her faith and the strength and peace she had in facing her own mortality.
 
In preparation for recognizing the five years that Kim has no longer been with us, I have been reflecting on the values that Kim lived out in her life. As I boiled these down to three core things that really helped define her, I was amazed at how those things were also spoken about repeatedly at her memorial.
In addition to her faith, which served as the backdrop and motivating factor behind all of what Kim sought to be and do, the three values that played a huge part in making Kim who she was were People, Practicality, and Generosity.    
 
Despite being an introvert, Kim loved being with people. She loved organizing family get-togethers, spending time with her parents, siblings, and in-laws, and seeing her friends, many of whom she had known for over 25 years, if not longer.  For most of her adult life, Kim was the social hub of her family and friends. In our post-high-school years, each Friday afternoon would involve a call or text to Kim to see what was cooking that weekend. Her phone would light up as people would check in, and often the Reitkerk house would be abuzz with friends popping by to hang out, or being used as a meeting place before going out.
Her love of people continued on in her workplace at Elim Village. Kim was never in love with her work, though she was amazing at it, but what got her excited to go to work were the people in her office and the friends she made there. People made everything better for Kim. Kim loved having fun, hearing good stories, and being with those she loved.
 
Kim not only loved the people in her life, but she also loved efficiency and practicality. If there was a better way to do something, she was all over it. At first glance, some of her shortcuts or efficiencies didn’t make total sense, but once you saw the whole picture and how it all fit together in her amazing mind, you could quickly see how she had trimmed the fat, got to the heart of the matter, and made everything easier. For Kim, it was all about practicality. Things needed to make sense, needed to balance out, and needed to make life easier for someone or some organization.
Kim had both her feet firmly planted on the ground, and in my own academia and pastoring, if I started getting too high into the clouds or heavens in my thinking or preaching, she quickly knew how to reach up and pull me back down, to remind me why I was doing what I was doing.  Kim worked with numbers for most of her career. Number made sense to her–they were logical, fair, and they provided practical answers. You could see them, prove them, and balance them–they stood for something real and concrete. At home, she loved to puzzle; the larger and more complex the puzzle, the better. Somehow, she could just see it, and attacked each puzzle not simply with the golden rule of borders first, but in what she saw to be the most efficient and practical way possible. In Kim’s life, just like in puzzling and math, everything had its practical role and practical place.
 
Kim was also a very generous person. People could sometimes get a first impression of Kim as someone who was hard or unfriendly, but this was just Kim being Kim. Once you got to know Kim, you realized just how deep her heart went and how much she cared for people. Often when it came to donations, Kim and I would come up with numbers in our heads on what we should give–her number was often at least 50% more than what I thought. She loved giving to practical causes, especially when people were truly in need. If she saw or heard of a friend or family member in need of help, Kim thought hard and seriously about how she could lend assistance, and she never thought twice about actually doing something. In combining her love of friends and family, her strong Christian faith, and her instinct for practicality and efficiency, she desired to meet the needs of people with an open and giving heart. Kim knew how much she had been blessed, and she desired to share that blessing with others.
 
It is out of these values that meant so much to Kim, along with the context of her personal cancer journey, that we are launching our fundraising initiative later this week. We are getting more and more excited to share this with you. It is just taking a final couple of days to dot some i’s and cross some t’s. But please stay tuned!

​This Thursday, April 2nd, marks five years since Kim, my late wife, passed away from cancer. Kim was a beautiful person, both inside and out. At her memorial, one of her friends said that Kim was like a Cadbury Mini Egg, a little hard and crunchy on the outside, but very sweet on the inside. I think this was a very good metaphor for Kim. Kim was an introvert and very much her own person, but when you got to know her, you quickly learned that she loved many things in life.  Kim loved her family and loved her friends; she loved her work, and she loved to play; Kim loved to laugh, loved to puzzle, and she loved camping. Kim also loved God and had a deep faith.  
 
Running through all these things that Kim loved and made her who she was were three values that acted as through-lines for her entire life. They are people, practicality, and generosity.
 
This year, to mark the five years that Kim has now lived in our memory and hearts, I wanted to do something to help us, as a community, reawaken Kim’s memory and honour her legacy and the values that guided much of her life.
 
To this end, I am excited to announce that this year, starting next weekend, we are launching a fundraiser, in partnership with the BC Cancer Foundation, to honour Kim. This fundraiser will be something that aligns closely with Kim’s own cancer journey, and also with her values of people, practicality, and generosity.
 
Over the next number of days, I will be publishing a number of blog posts about the things that were truly important to her. At the end of the week, we will be going public with naming our fundraising initiative and how you can partner with us.
 
As Kim’s family, friends, and community, she touched all of us in different ways. I hope that through this fundraising campaign, her life and memory can now continue to touch the lives of people who have never met her but who find themselves on a similarly difficult road of having a cancer diagnosis.
 
So, I invite you to stay tuned here for more information in the days to come, and to share this with your friends and family, to help re-remember Kim and the way she might have touched your life, and to learn how her legacy of people, practicality, and generosity can live on and touch the lives of thousands more.
 
Thank you.
George.

If you are still checking this blog I appreciate your patience. The reason for my silence is that I have once again been able to get out and start living life! It is a different life, but we are so incredibly grateful to be able to do what we have been doing.
 
A quick update on my health: things are continuing in the right direct. Since my last blog post in early September my lung function numbers continued to increase for a month or six weeks, and they have now nicely plateaued almost within sight of my numbers from before I got sick. Carrie and I continue to go a walks 4-5 times a week, and I’ve had to decrease my food intake as I was edging towards the over-side of my optimum weight.
 
The opportunities this miraculous turn around in my health have afforded me have been incredible.  I was able to participate in the fall harvest, hauling corn for our farm as well as two others in Delta. I was able to help out with Carrie’s family in their ranch round up, riding an ATV through the back trails of the Merritt area rounding up cattle and driving them down to the corrals, where they could be trucked back to the ranch for winter. I was able to preach at a church in Vancouver, and Carrie and I went away for a weekend to celebrate our one-year anniversary. It has been a busy two months.
 
It is difficult to express the how full of gratitude our hearts are for this turn around and healing in my health. I saw my doctor last week and he said that the pre-transplant clinic has now officially closed my file as there is no need to talk about re-transplant now, and that my recovery is not something anyone on the transplant team could have foreseen.
 
Taking care of myself and my health is my top priority again, and will be for the rest of my life. We are so incredibly humbled and grateful for this second (or is it third) chance at life I am now experiencing.    
 
 

I know it has been awhile since I last posted, but often times no news is good news, and that is the case here. Carrie and I have enjoyed a relaxing month together. I have been continuing to exercise (walking, biking, weights), I’ve been pushing some of my limits by doing more around the house and yard, and we have been able to get away for a couple short holidays. It has been a good month.
 
Picking up where I left off in my last post, in mid-August I repeated a number of the pre-transplant workup tests that I had originally done back at the end of May. The difference between the two was quite obvious. I am back to my baseline weight (maybe even a kg over it), and my lung function and exercise tolerance has continued to improve week by week. My lungs are nowhere near their original baseline, but they are also nowhere near where they were when I was discharged from hospital.
 
Throughout July and August, Carrie and I have been going to transplant clinic once a month. We were their yesterday, and it turned out to be quite the visit. My doctor basically outlined that unless my lung function begins declining, or unless I get an infection again, we are no longer going to talk about re-transplant! I have been taken off the re-transplant “radar” and have been told to go and live my life and we’ll just see where things go.
 
This is amazing and humbling news. I won’t lie, this is secretly what we were hoping for, but to actually hear it from my doctor is quite another thing. This doesn’t mean I can just return to life as it was before I got sick, but it means we can continue living into this new normal that we have created over the summer without the immediate cloud of transplant hanging over us.
 
The transplant doctor that Carrie and I saw yesterday is one of two doctors who has been part of my transplant story since the very beginning. He said that in all the years he has been working with transplant patients, my case over the last half year ranks up there as one of the most unique cases he has seen. Going from being intubated with acute rejection in May, being told in June that it would be a matter of weeks until I would be waitlisted for re-transplant, and now recovering enough that there is no time frame for when we will need to talk about this again is quite a unique thing. It is a miracle.
 
He did reiterate that I am not out of the woods. I still have a lot of scar tissue in my lungs, and there is that pesky infection sitting dormant down there still, but it does seem we have been given the green light to stop “waiting to be waitlisted” and instead learn how to live life with my lungs in their new state.
 
If there is one thing that Carrie and I feel right now, it is gratitude. Gratitude for this miracle journey of recovery I have been on; gratitude for all your prayers, thoughts, support, and well wishes. Life is still delicate, my lungs are still fragile, but we have to seize these moments of gratitude and joy when we can. 

​I realize it has been awhile since last posting - the truth is that there just hasn’t been that much new to update on. Things have been cruising along for the past couple weeks. Carrie and I were able to get away for a couple days last week, which was very nice. I continue to go for daily walks and add in some strength training where I can. Protein and healthy weight gain are still the name of the game when it comes to my diet. My breathing tests continue to inch up ever so slightly from week to week, with two weeks ago seeing a pretty significant jump. At the end of July, I recorded at 10% increase in my lung function from the beginning of the month, so that was pretty awesome, and I am only 5 pounds off from my original weight from before I got sick. (I had lost 25 pounds in April and May).
 
In spite of these gains over the past month, I will still need a transplant, but I am still not waitlisted yet.  The doctors are pretty much taking it week to week. This week I am repeating some of the original tests I did back in May during my pre-transplant work up. I have made so much unexpected progress that the doctors are wanting more recent data in order to make their decisions about when to waitlist, and then the ultimate decisions around my eventual transplant.  
 
So, we continue to live and to wait, just taking life week to week. We try not to think too much about the future, but to live in the present, thinking about what needs to be done today to make the most of this time.  
 

​Like any one who is struggling with some health issues, life begins to take shape around a new kind of cadence––that of tests, waiting for results, and doctor’s appointments.
 
The last two weeks have seen that rhythm repeated a number of times. The beginning of the month began with a CT scan, then waiting for the results from that and the inevitable appointment with a doctor to discuss said results. Adjustments were made to my meds, and then we waited another week for a follow up appointment from another doctor to go over those changes and review any further results. Then the wait was on for my bronchoscopy, which happened this past Monday. And now we wait for the microbes and all the stuff that could be growing in my lungs to grow out in a lab somewhere, and then in short order we will have another appointment to review those results.
 
I am not complaining, it is just always amazing how being sick can keep one so busy.
 
So, what are the result of these most recent tests? Unfortunately, it appears that the two infections that my body was fighting, and which seemed to have caused my acute rejection, are still down there in my lungs. My doctors were hoping that the long course of medications I was on from April to June would have killed them off, but it appears we fell short. From what I understand, the infections are not totally active doing damage, but they do pose a threat. I’ve therefore been restarted on some of the meds I was recently taken off of.
 
Overall, I am still feeling good. My weight has plateaued as I am more active now, my energy is up and I feel I am still gaining muscle.
 
Carrie and I find the disparity between how I’m feeling and the state of my lungs to be quite interesting. Because I am feeling well, we kind of allow ourselves to think that my lungs must also be improving, but when we get test results back and speak to the doctors it is still mostly a litany of bad news and confirmation that these lungs are shot.
 
We are incredibly grateful for how I feel, and the doctors see it as very good that I am feeling well and gaining strength, as they want me at my strongest going into transplant.  Once again, thank you for all your support and prayers during this journey. We feel your love, and we know that in all of this we are resting in the hands of God.  

Last week was another good week with continued progress made. Slowly packing the weight on, although still another 10-15 pounds short of where I was before I started getting sick; and slowly gaining some muscle back in my legs and upper body.
 
The highlight of the week was getting back on the bike and going for two bike rides. It felt good to be able to cover some distance, and to be able to get around and see nature without the hum and puff of my oxygen concentrator.
 
The main event of the week, however, was our transplant clinic visit and CT scan on Thursday. I forget if I mentioned it before, but back in April it was discovered that I had a 4cm hole/cavity in the middle of my right lung. This was caused by an infection and obviously gave us and the doctors quite the scare. The team has been monitoring it closely by way of CT scans and Thursday’s scan showed that the hole has significantly reduced in size. It won’t be viable lung tissue, but at least it is closing up and doesn’t pose as great a risk as it once did.
 
The doctors feel I am in a good position to continue on at home, just doing what I have been doing. They are not putting me on the waitlist yet, but we did talk about the timeline a bit more, trying to nail down what the right timing for being waitlisted will look like.
Even though I am feeling stronger and my body is getting more efficient with its oxygen use, my breathing tests did drop a bit in the last two weeks. This will probably be par-for-the-course going forward. My doctors don’t expect a sudden drop in my lung function, like what happened in May, but more of a consistent gradual decline (barring any infection of course).
 
The conclusion of the matter is that though I am feeling well and getting stronger, we are still firmly on the road towards another transplant. We are incredibly grateful for each day that I am feeling well and able to be at home. If I am able to remain stable I don’t need to go back to clinic until the end of the month, which in itself is also an encouraging sign from the transplant team.
 
 

This has been another good week, so there is not a lot to update. I am still making slow progress in the right direction. Putting on a little bit of weight each day, building a bit more muscle as we keep pushing our daily walks a little bit more. I am able to walk just over 30 minutes at a time, on 5 liters of oxygen. My doctors don’t really care about how much oxygen I use while exercising, as long as I am pushing myself and keeping my heartrate up. It’s not so much about the lungs anymore as it is about conditioning the rest of my body.
 
I have not talked to any doctors this week, so no news there, but later next week I have another appointment at the transplant clinic. I went to a Pulmonary Rehab appointment yesterday and they were pleasantly surprised with the progress I have made.
 
It has almost been a month now that I have been home, which is longer than I thought I would have. I was discharged on May 30th and back then we were hoping I would be able to stay home for two, maybe three weeks. But here we are 4 weeks out and still feeling relatively well.
 
These next seven days are going to be interesting. Over the next week I will be finishing up all the meds that were started while in hospital. I have already been off one of them for about two weeks, and so far so good. I will stop one more over the weekend, and a third, the most important one, will be peeled off at the end of next week. This will be a critical time period to see if any infection comes roaring back, or to see if my immune system wakes up and begins attacking (rejecting) my lungs again. This is kind of what my doctors expect to happen (hence the reason I am ready to be placed on the waitlist at a moment’s notice). There is the outside chance that I keep poking along at this level, flying under the radar for a period of time until that other shoe decides to drop, we will just need to wait and see.
 
Whatever happens in the next seven to ten days, we are very thankful for these past four weeks at home, and the weight and strength I have been able to gain during this time. While in hospital, I never thought I’d be able to get off supplementary oxygen the way I have (I only need to use it while exercising).
 
Again, we appreciate all your prayers and support in all the different ways it comes in. This next week is going to be pretty delicate as we watch and wait to see how my body reacts to coming off these extra meds, but we will just need to take it day by day.