In this episode Gina has a conversation with Christine Burke about her journey through a terminal diagnosis and the powerful ways Jesus has provided, spoken and brought much more than physical healing.
Christine’s Beat the Beast resource for anyone battling cancer.
Christine’s list of Healing Scriptures.
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A Terminal Diagnosis
Gina:
Christina and I go back a little bit, we were at the same church for a long time, and then in the music industry world, you worked at ultimate ears. What was your job? What was your title there?
Christine:
I was director of sales. I didn’t start there, but I ended up there. I was in marketing, and then next thing you know, I was in sales.
Gina:
You have always been this incredibly strong professional woman, and also such a strong woman in the faith. You’re an evangelist, and evangelists always fascinate me because you just have a boldness and a lack of fear when it comes to sharing about the Lord.
I remember, my pastor when I was growing up, Mike Macintosh, was a crazy evangelist. The joke was he could be standing in line at McDonald’s and by the time he ordered the guy standing in the line next to him accepted Jesus. You’re kind of on that level.
I just remember we’ve had so many conversations, and you talking about the people that you’re burdened for that you work with, and you have always been so relentless in your intercession and prayers for the people around you, that you see how God’s strategically placed you in an industry that was very dark, and you never shied away from that or were repulsed by that, but you actually were more drawn to the brokenness in the midst of that. God used you in really powerful ways.
So I would love for you to share your testimony! And three years or so you’ve been on another journey with your health, and you are a miracle. A completely legitimate bonafide miracle that you are sitting here talking to me right now. The fact that you’re alive is a testimony to God’s grace and His goodness and His power. So I would just love for you to share your story.
Christine:
I’ll start with the miracle. Okay. So they gave me 15 months to live, 42 months ago.
Gina:
Wow.
Christine:
So that right there says that I’m a miracle. I’ve met people that have what I have and aren’t here anymore. I don’t know anybody, except for one man I know in San Diego, my sister tracked him down on LinkedIn, and he’s still alive for 27 years.
Gina:
I remember that. I remember when she was doing that research and she’s like, “We need to have lunch with this guy.”
Christine:
Yeah, she called him up through LinkedIn and asked him if her sister and her sister’s husband could take him out to a really expensive restaurant. And he said, “sure!” So we did that. But, it’s very rare. That’s why I’m a complete miracle.
Gina:
And what do you have?
Christine:
It’s called Glioblastoma. So I was a stay at home mom for 10 years. I didn’t really know you then. I don’t think you were at Coast Hills yet, and I was really involved with M.O.P.S. and ministries like that. Just being a mom of two kids, two little ones.
Then when 2008 hit, I went back to work and I worked at this little company called Ultimate Ears. Then Ultimate Ears ended up getting purchased by Logitech, and then that grew bigger. Then next thing you know, I was basically working for Logitech and in a pretty high pressure role.
Then I kept getting promoted more and more and more, and the work was getting more and more and more. Then I got recruited to go work as a president of another company. When I started, I was thinking, “I’m just going to work for six months. I’ll just answer phones or whatever I need to do just to get us over this hump.”
The next thing I know, I’m the president of a company. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was very overwhelming, and it was taking over my life. I was having a lot of headaches, I wasn’t taking care of myself, I was traveling, I was working long hours, I was not drinking water. I wouldn’t drink any water until maybe like four ounces before I went to bed.
I would travel all over. The company that I was president of was already failing, I kind of was brought in to save it, and it wasn’t happening. Instead of realizing that I needed to stop, I kept trying harder and harder and harder, and praying more and more and more, and it just still wasn’t happening, the Lord wasn’t making it work.
Then finally we did end up getting it half sold to another company. My headaches were getting worse, I was getting dizzy, and everyone kept telling me to go to the doctor. I kept saying, “I don’t have time.” I would just take Advil. I had this giant jug of Advil in my office drawer, which I didn’t even realize that it was such a big jug of Advil until I went to pick up my stuff after. I used to offer it to everyone.
So anyway, I finally went to my doctor. She was like, “For headaches, really? I mean, we can try and get an MRI, but I don’t even know what kind of MRI to order. So I’ll just send you to a neurologist and they can do it.” Well, the neurologist had a nine week lead time and the headaches were getting worse.
So I went back and then she referred me to a different neurologist, which had a three week lead time. Then finally I was at dinner one night with a friend and she started crying and said, “Well, did you tell your doctor that your dad died of a brain tumor when he was 37?” And I was like, “No, because brain tumors aren’t hereditary.”
And she started crying and said, “Why don’t you just go to the emergency room and get the MRI?” And I was like, “All right, fine. I don’t have anything to do on Saturday. I’ll just go down there and get the MRI.” My husband wanted to come, and I wouldn’t even let him, because it was March 25th and he hadn’t done the taxes yet. And I’m like, “You gotta get the taxes done. I’ll call you if it’s anything.”
I went to get the MRI, I told the doctor the story and he was like, “I really can’t authorize an MRI for headaches. But if you want, I can do a CT scan, but that’s got radiation in it. It’s like an x-ray. So I don’t know if you want to expose yourself to that the x-ray field.” I was like, you know what? I’ve been waiting here for about two hours now I’m going to go ahead and go for it.
So he gave me the CT scan and then he came back and said they found something suspicious and now they want to do the MRI. So I did call my husband, at that point and he came down and he called a couple other friends too. They ended up coming down.
I did the MRI and we waited a long time, and finally a neurosurgeon walked in the room, and he said that he was sorry to tell me that I have a very extremely, extremely large mass on my brain. He said, “I don’t even know how you’re alive right now.” As soon as he said that, that’s where I feel like the miracle started, and I felt God’s presence immediately.
Never in the Dark
Christine:
When he said, “I don’t know how you’re alive right now.” I felt like I was hearing God say, “You’re alive because of me, and I’m going to take care of you through this.” I immediately thought of my life verse that I gave myself, because I didn’t grow up going to church, it was John 8:12 Jesus says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
So I immediately thought of that. I’m like, “Well, I may have some giant mass in my head, but I’ll never be in the darkness ever, because I follow Jesus, so I’m just going to focus on that right now.” And he even looked at me like, “I don’t think you understand what I’m saying.” Like, can you come out? And he showed us the picture and he’s like, do you see?
All you have is headaches? He thought it was a parasite. He’s asked, “Have you been to Africa for like six months? Or Asia and eat pork every day?” And I was like, “No.” And he’s all, “Sometimes parasites can cause this fluid buildup. To me there’s no way it could be a tumor because it’s so big.”
Anyway, long story short, he immediately put me in the ICU. I didn’t even go to a regular room. They wouldn’t let me leave. I suppose I could have signed a release, but I was kind of scared at that point. Then I had brain surgery two days later to remove it. The surgeon said that he was able to get everything visible, and I didn’t have any neuro deficits.
They warned me that I may not be able to feel my left side because it’s on the right. I may not be able to feel my left side when I come out of surgery. That was like the biggest risk and praise to the Lord, I didn’t have anything. Even in the hospital the doctors were saying, “I can’t even believe you had brain surgery like today or yesterday and you’re fine”.
All the therapists were coming in and I didn’t need physical therapy, I was fine. praise the Lord! I just kept singing His praises. My sister has a business where she makes scripture cards. She flew down from Northern California, and I asked her to bring a bunch of her scripture cards that she sells on Amazon.
Every single person that walked in my room, whether it was a janitor, a nurse, or someone drawing my blood, which they do like 10 times a day, my doctors, every single person in the ER, I would give them that card, and I would just say, “These are blessing cards. They bless me, and I’d like to bless you. Would you like one?”
I never once had someone say they didn’t want one. I asked my doctor who exactly was going to be in the ER, when they operated on me. And he told me everybody from the scrub tech to the computer tech, and I made sure each person that I gave each person that card, except unfortunately I didn’t give one to the scrub tech, but they promised me before they put me under that he would get it, but he had already scrubbed in, so he couldn’t touch it.
So, that was the start of that. And then I ended up doing 110 chemos, and 30 radiation treatments. I wore this new technology for brain tumors, where you wear this thing on your head, it’s like an electrical cap for lack of a better word. It’s called tumor treating fields. I had to shave my head every other day for that. I wore that for two years, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, except when I took the things off to shave my head again, because you had to have a bald head in order for it to work.
The chemo didn’t cause me to lose my hair, so that was kind of a bummer, but there were no side effects outside of the head shaving. I would take that any day over the chemo. I did not do well with the chemo at all. In that regard, I had the same experience as a lot of cancer patients. I was very sick. I spent two weeks in bed every month for over a year, curled up wanting to die.
I couldn’t drive. I couldn’t do anything to make the nausea go away, until they finally did. I was throwing up a lot, but they finally got that under control, but I still had the same feelings. I just wasn’t throwing up. So that part was really hard, but the Lord got me through it, and He gave me a lot of opportunities to speak about it.
Check out the rest of the conversation: Overcoming Cancer & A Survivor’s Message
Check out a related blog on Alice Houtenville’s fight with Cancer: Healing in Chronic Sickness
Check out the Dwell Meditations
