I’ve heard it said that you couldn’t have a testimony without going through a test first, and the story of Loucelle's victory over cancer is a perfect example of that.
A few weeks ago, on Jan. 23, 24, and 25, Dr. E and his wife, Loucelle, from Utica, N.Y., ministered at church, Living Word Fellowship, near Wellsboro. During the ladies’ meeting, Loucelle, who had been stricken with cancer two years ago, but has experienced a miraculous healing, gave her personal testimony.
This woman of faith brought tears of joy to the eyes of her listeners as she told of how she was misdiagnosed at first when she went to her doctor for a swelling under her left arm. The doctor told her it was just her lymph nodes processing a series of six inoculations she had received so she could travel to the Philippines with her husband, a minister who lectures around the world. That was March, 2002. While she was overseas, she began to notice a swelling in her left breast as well, and she began to experience a persistent fever, so she called the doctor the day after she returned home and was told she had an abscess, and it was draining into the swelling under her arm. She was given an antibiotic and sent home. The breast abscess went away but the swelling under her arm did not. Finally, a sonogram and subsequent biopsy was ordered, and she was sent to a specialist. At that time she had decided to stay home from her husband’s next ministry trip to Europe in May. She said that on May 28, she was reading her Bible, and the words of Psalm 30: 2 – 3 and also Psalm 31: 13b, 14, and 15a jumped out at her. They were a warning to her but also a reassurance that she would be healed.
“Without that word, I wouldn’t have had the faith to fight what was to come,” she related. On May 30, she visited the doctor who had done the biopsy to have the stitches removed, and he would not tell her because she had come by herself, Dr. being in Europe, that the biopsy showed cancer in the lymph nodes, also known as lymphoma. He told her she had a very large malignant tumor and it was not operable.
After hearing this devastating news, Loucelle went home and prayed. She knew that Yahweh God Almighty had given her a word and that was the rock she was to stand upon. “It gave me faith,” she said. “There was not a doubt in my mind that He would perform it,” she added.
Dr. advised his wife to follow the advice of a nurse friend of hers and consult with a physician who is also a nutritionist in Nashville, Tennessee, to begin treating her cancer. Starting the beginning of June, she completely changed her diet to all natural foods in juice form only for 30 days and no cooked food for 11 months. She was also ordered to jump on the mini tramp 10 minutes a day and take a coffee enema morning and evening.
As she continued with the treatment, her tumor began to shrink. “It was 3 inches across when I started and by the end of the summer, it was ½ the size it had been,” she said.
At the end of the treatment, she had 5.7% lymph edema, or swelling from fluid, in her left arm, and after a month, it had decreased to .2%. Loucelle wasn’t out of the woods yet, however, as she discovered more tumors growing in other areas of her body.
For six months she stayed in Tennessee, passing four tumors through her bowel and kidneys. Every day she quoted the word Yahweh God Almighty had given her from Acts 27:25 and reminded Yahweh God Almighty of what He had promised. “Like the apostle Paul, I believed Yahweh God Almighty that it would be just as He told me,” she said.
She also prayed, telling Yahweh God Almighty she would stand on His promises no matter how bad it got. “So I prayed into March, but the mercury in the immunizations I had received was blocking my healing,” she said.
Her doctor told her she needed to get some chemotherapy treatments. She didn’t want to, but the swelling in her body was interfering with her breathing, so she went into the hospital, where they drained three liters of fluid from her left lung.
“I weighed 177 pounds and my neck was swollen to an enormous size. After they drained the fluid from my body, I weighed 114 pounds,” she said. The doctors in the hospital told her husband that she had two to four months to live, as the cancer had gotten into her bone marrow, though they said this without testing. After testing her bone marrow, at her insistence, they found that there was no cancer there. Dr. cancelled all his trips for the next several months.
After the first treatment, every tumor disappeared. She had no problems, except a canker sore in her mouth. Doctors wanted to give her six total chemo treatments, three weeks apart, and she would likely lose all her hair, so she had her head shaved.
She saw on the doctor’s report that they believed her cancer had metastasized, or spread to all her internal organs. When she went to get the second chemo treatment, they neglected to check her white blood cell count first, which proved to be a nearly fatal mistake for Loucelle.
About four hours into the treatment, they took her blood, and her blood count was very low. They sent her home, where she slipped into a coma two hours later, passing out on the bathroom floor, where her husband found her.
It turned out she had full-blown pneumonia, a severe blood infection, was almost completely dehydrated and had no blood pressure. They called code blue, which means she was clinically dead, her heart had stopped.
For nine days she lay near death in the hospital in a coma. “I had 36 needles in me (even between my fingers, my husband tells me) and I blew up to 188 pounds because my kidneys were not working,” she said. She had six doctors treating her; all of them told her husband there was no hope to save her. “I was almost 70 years old. One friend told me he was standing by my bed praying for me when one of the doctors walked in and said ‘Is she still here?’” Loucelle recounted.
Dr. got the prayer chains of several churches going; including Living Word Fellowship’s. After nine days of intense prayer, she woke up. She stayed in the hospital for three more weeks and when she was discharged she weighed 99 pounds, but the cancer was gone.
“I was very weak; I had a walker and a bedside commode, but I was too weak to even get myself onto it.” She said. She said she ate day and night. Her appetite was voracious, gaining 28 pounds in 30 days. The doctors wanted to start up her chemo treatments again, every four weeks, but she said she didn’t want anymore if she didn’t need them.
“I wanted another CAT scan, and it showed there was no cancer, so three months later I went back for another CAT scan and blood work. At the end of a three month period, my blood was perfect,” she said.
Her doctor was amazed. “He shook his head and said, ‘I can’t believe I’m seeing you,’” she recalled. Two months later she was traveling with her husband again, restored to perfect health. Loucelle credits the prayers of Yahweh God Almighty’s people. “You stand in the hedge when anyone asks you to pray, because it works.” She said. She admits she doesn’t know why she had to go through her ordeal, but that “maybe it was to convince you that Yahweh God Almighty is faithful, life is good and I thank Him for it, for health and strength, and that He would use me,” she said.