How do we care for people who have cancer? What should we say (and not say), and how can our churches support them? In this compassionate interview, Pastor Steve Moy of Evangelical Chinese Church of Seattle and Pastor Helicon Kuan of Chinese for Christ Church of San Jose share their experiences as cancer survivors and provide insights into how to minister to those who are receiving treatment.
SOLA Network’s Daniel K. Eng moderated this candid conversation in which both pastors discussed their battle with cancer and how encouraged they were by their friends and church communities.
We hope their talk encourages you to care for those you know who are sick through actions and prayer.
Watch their interview below, on our YouTube page, or via Podcast.
Editor’s Note: Below is a rough transcription of their conversation. It has been lightly edited for clarity. Please note there may be typos or grammatical errors.
Daniel K. Eng: Hello, everyone, this is Daniel Eng at the SOLA Network. And here I am with Steve Moy, and Helicon Kuan. And I’m gonna have you guys introduce yourselves as you go along. What we’re talking about today is how to care for someone with cancer.
And this is something that has touched many of us. Maybe we have a loved one or a friend who has gone through this. And many times, we don’t know how to respond well. And so I just want to hear from you about your experiences.
And so first, both of you have have gone through cancer, and both of you are are vocational ministers so I wanted to ask you about this. The first thing I want to ask you is to share about yourself, then also your experience with cancer, and how’s your health now?
Steve Moy: So I’m Steve Moy. I work at the Evangelical Chinese Church of Seattle. And I had cancer back in 2009. So it’s about 12-13 years or so. So since since my diagnosis and treatment and such, I had Non-Hodgkin lymphoma in my spine. I don’t want to bore everyone with the the medical terms and things like that, but basically, it was all up and down my spine and also in the bony areas of my skull that had cancer cells.
So I was going through treatments for about a month of because it was stage four cancer. So a whole month of treatments with chemo and then also some radiation for the spot directly.
I don’t think anyone can be ready for cancer. Everyone tries to avoid the “c” word, but it happens. So and it was a first time for me and my family. I don’t think anyone my extended family, anyone had cancer that I knew of at the time. Just talking to my mom afterwards, [I learned] my grandfather, her dad, who I had never met, had nose cancer. He passed away back in Macau many years ago. So there is a history which it was not always told to us growing up. So we would never be able to tell our doctors say, “Oh, did you have a history of cancer.” This was never, it was never ever pronounced.
Going through the experience, it was crazy. Because I was in pain for for months from January leading up to April, which was the main thing. I thought had some kind of pain, some kind of nerve issue, which was kind of true because the cancer was growing in the spine. It was affecting the pain or the nerves that was affecting the pain areas.
It was not until four months later, after going through multiple blood tests, seeing the many different specialists just to see to figure out what the pain was all about. Then using a CAT scan we were able to find a growth really small, and that’s what is affecting the nerves.
And then, of course, everything was a whirlwind from the first of April all the way down to the end of April, before I was given chemotherapy—Seeing an oncologist and going through all treatments, seeing a second opinion as well. And everyone said, “Well, your type of cancer is very treatable. You know, this 95% is treatable, and you will be in remission.”
However, there’s always that thought going in like, “Okay, the 5%, who’s the 5%? Am I gonna be the 5%.” So there is always a sense of, “Okay, I know, my life is in God’s hands. And I know that he heals—he is the great healer,” so thus trusting in Him in this process. I think having my wife being there, to handling all the medical stuff on the side and also having someone in our family who was an oncology nurse who was able to give knowledge and also wisdom on some of the things that we should be looking out for in the hospital.
I still have the box of all the medical records. We still have in a binder of all the treatments from every day that my wife put together. And she’s amazing during the whole time just doing everything that she could while I was in the hospital. At that time we also had our oldest daughter was about four years old.
So just for me, it was just again, it was just a huge whirlwind and not knowing the outcome. Even though the doctors, experts will say well, “It’s gonna be good, it’s gonna be good.” And then having the treatments going in for a week. “Okay, you’re treated. Go home, recover, come back in two weeks, and we’ll treat you again.” So it’s this bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
So, treatments relating to chemo is always hit or miss. There’s some that were fine with not-so-low energy levels, spending time in the hospital a long time. And there are another kind of chemo, which we just being tested this being given it, knowing that this was the bad one. So that would be a lot of vomiting and other things like that, relating to it. And, of course, the lethargy as well. So yeah, one type of chemo, “Oh, I’ll be fine.” And then knowing that, “Oh, that second one’s coming. Oh, I just got to get prepared for it.”
Now I’m in full remission, the last 12 years. The doctors that after the first five years, you should be in remission, you’ll be in remission to be good. So no indication of any cancer right now, especially not that type.
Daniel K. Eng: Thank you, Steve. Thank God that you are in better health now and have been for for this many years. Helicon?
Helicon Kuan: Hi, yeah, my name is Helicon Kuan, and I am a pastor at Chinese for Christ Church of San Jose. It’s in Silicon Valley. And my experience with cancer was actually I was planning to go on a missions trip to Iraq, and the year half a year before, I was in Bolivia, and I had problems breathing. And for some reason I was in Bolivia, South America, and it’s a high altitude place. And I had a hard time breathing and so I decided when I came back, I was going to get some something done with my nose.
And so before my second missions trip to Iraq, I ended up going to the ENT to remove some adenoid tissue that built up. And it was in that process of finishing my missions planning that I found out the day after I paid for my ticket, which was non refundable, that I that I was grounded, I couldn’t go because they had found cancer. Eventually we found it is Hodgkins lymphoma, so it’s the opposite of Steve’s. He had non-Hodgkins, and mine was actually in my lymph nodes, which is like right here.
And I have no idea I was in great health and it just lost like a ton of weight working out. It was probably one of the better stages of my fitness levels.
And so I was grounded from going to this missions trip and basically the process was that whirlwind of finding out what you have, where it is at, and what I ended up having stage two A which is early stage two locations, or multiple location, but says two is mostly my lymph nodes, right and left.
Essentially I did four months of four rounds of chemo. I know it’s a highly treatable lymphoma. And fortunately, like Steve, ours are both pretty knowledgeable so certain treatments are widely used and common. So I knew the survival rate was much higher. Obviously, there’s a low statistical number that people that don’t doesn’t work out so that was always a fear, but I was pretty confident it was gonna be okay.
But it was still, like everybody else’s cancers, no fun. And it was horribly tough. At times, I’d say like, chemo was four months. And then we waited to see how far and it was cleared and I got to skip the last two two rounds. Every two weeks was one round for me, and it was like a four hour session. So they give you a one week where you suffer through the after effects and your body recovers.
I would say that chemo, the hardest thing about it was it’s like a marathon, like early on your body recovers, you’re fine within a few days. And then four months in, you’re just like, it’s exhausting and there’s starting to be aftereffects. Everybody’s effects or experiences are very different, how they respond to the medication. Some lose certain flavors, some get really nauseous for certain things, I had that.
And after that I did radiation treatment, which was for a month straight, so about 20 days—four weeks, basically—they call it five days a week. It was one 10 minute burst on the two lymph nodes reassure. Radiation is the older way of doing things. It’s kind of like a shotgun blast. Chemo is more precise, it’s more like a poison that tries to kill everything that’s living, that’s why you lose your hair. And so that’s kind of the things that went through.
And that’s the hard part. I always tell people radiation was more vicious because I lost my taste buds and my sense of taste for two months or so. And everything tasted horrible. I’ll share that later, if you want to hear more about that. But yeah, that was tough.
And so living through radiation, and I actually went through the journey kind of without anybody but my church community around me. At that time I was single. And, you know, currently now I’m married and I have a son, son that’s almost one years old, next couple days. And so praise God. I didn’t think we could have kids after the chemo and the radiation. So God’s provision.
But besides that, I think the experience, What’s hard is just I wrote, don’t read the stuff online. When you hear about people’s cancer, don’t go online and start looking because they usually give you the worst case there is, I had people calling me and crying, going, “You’re gonna die.” It was so hard. So my experience was don’t read anything online, take what your doctor says, they’re the professionals, your oncologist, and work with them.
And I still have my file full of all my stuff gathered together. So similar to Steve. And oh, by the way, five years clear, five years clear. Now six years. I mean, they call it deep water, just kind of like, Steve. It was pretty awesome to free. But before those checkups, there’s always still a little bit of anxiety, a little bit of fear, like what if, what if, and so it’s gotten less and less after the subsequent years, but year five going past that, that boundary has made me you’re in remission as well. I’m so grateful for that. So I don’t think that I think as much about cancer anymore, as I used to.
Daniel K. Eng: Both of you kind of shared a bit about kind of how your prayers were, or what you were thinking and how you’re relating to God, you know, what were some of what was your spiritual journey through that time? And then what are some things that now that you look back? What are some insights that you have, in your in terms of in terms of God and how and how you relate to Him?
Steve Moy: Definitely, with the massive amount of times you have, you’re not doing you’re not working. You don’t have to be with a lot of people. There’s a lot of time to do more in depth Bible devotions and Bible reading, I mean, during the times when you can do it. So there’s just a lot of sitting around, although people say, “Oh, you could watch TV, you could do all this stuff.” After a while, those things just didn’t matter anymore. I think going in yeah there’s this anxiousness and nervousness thing that, “Okay, how will this what was the outcome going to be?” And I think as it progressed, I, I just got a sense of peace, knowing that God is going to either heal me, and knowing that things are in his hands.
So I felt that I was always at a sense of peace when people would come and visit in the hospital every so often. And, and people gather and talk and say, “Hey, how do you? How do you feel? What do you think?” I can see in their eyes that they’re anxious, or the way that their body language is they’re anxious. But for me, I just felt a sense of peace during the whole process, once I started the treatments, and I just felt like, I just felt that, you know, everything is God’s hands. So if I don’t, if I don’t survive this, I know that there’s, there’s a reason why. I don’t know why. But I know that I’m in God’s hands. So. So that was, that was, that was what I went through the whole the whole month of chemo, and the other treatments.
Helicon Kuan: And for me, I think peace was huge too. But for me, the word was gratitude. I think you can really thankful because your faith is very, you can theorize you can make things hugely complex. But I think when it comes down to life and death, like Moses says, right, it’s choose life, right? There’s two choices, you’re gonna die, you’re gonna live, do you want to believe or you don’t want to believe and you can live embittered life. Just traveling that course of being discouraged and more, or there was an opportunity to lean in and say, “God, you are real, and I can trust in you.”
And I think the word of God became incredibly real. And that time, I think stories like the story of Job became real. I’m sure if Steve probably has his own insights, I think Philippians for me was [seeing] Paul’s suffering and yet joy, and hopefulness. And if he was to die, or if he was to live, you know, it’s gain. And I think those are very comforting for me. So the word of God became comforting.
I think it was refining, and made me realize how much more God is working. I never felt alone. I think that’s the peace right is that you never feel alone. You had not only the sense of comfort from God, by the Spirit moving but there was also just people in your life, people that loved you that wanted to check up on you that would call you at random times, email you. And that happened many times. There’s calls or texts in the middle of the night that would just become where they didn’t know but I was breathing in that moment of struggling I needed that voice and God answered by sending a sister or brother to speak to me. And that helped and it gave me hope. It gave me hope that there’s a life to perhaps live and how to live it better in the future.
So for me it was I realized what’s more important. What are the things to be more grateful for because now as you realize, some things I’m so mad about or angry about? Why was I so mad? Life is so short, like so brief. It’s so why do I cling to things and be more grateful that I have friends or the loved ones I have like Steve having his wife at that time, and it’s changed the way I look at life today to this day? I think gratitude yeah.
Daniel K. Eng: Both of you are in vocational ministry. And this touched your life. How can people in the church support somebody who’s going through cancer? You know, from your experience, and also from your professional experience, too?
Helicon Kuan: I’ll go first this time, Steve. I think one of the great things the church did for me, our church was their prayer ministry was very active. They held times together just to pray for me. And they didn’t stop inviting me to things and encouraging it and even visiting me regularly. So members of my community would visit me, pray with me, pray with my mom, who was taking care of me for that first month.
And that was a huge witness to her and encouraged her to the church’s love. I think also, my church took care of my lot of the costs for me. So for me, that burden was removed, I didn’t have to worry about it as a young pastor, young single pastor guy, so that was very grateful thing was the church’s financial support.
But mainly it was the prayer in the friendship in the cooking the food, the meals chains that came in the cycle. That was so helpful. And so off top my head, I think all those things for now. Yeah.
Steve Moy: Yeah, similar to Helicon, I think that the community came together. And I think at ECC, that’s, that’s one of the big draws of it that the community does come together for you. Someone from from our small group, started up a blog for me, you know, this is early early on in those years of blogs. So she started a blog and somehow, it got disseminated to all my friends on the East Coast and such.
So I would check on the blog every day, and very similar to Helicon. People were writing on it Hey, haven’t seen you in 10 years. You know, I’m sorry to hear you have cancer. So this reading and seeing these names like “Oh, hey, remember, we went to a missions trip together back in? Back when we were in college? Do you remember me?” So just people just coming out and supporting say we’re praying for you every day.
And then later on, after treatment was done and I was healthy, I would hear from this these Sunday school teachers that will say, “Hey, we were praying for you during that time if you didn’t know,” and then other little children would come up now that they’re teenagers say, “I remember you, when I was in fourth grade, or third grade, all the Sunday school teachers say, ‘Oh, we need to pray for Steve because he has cancer.’” And they remember these things, and now that I hear it, I’m so encouraged knowing that there’s a lot more going on a lot more in the community that I never knew about. But the blog was great.
And I think, for me, I wasn’t working for the church at that time. So financially, we did cover some things. We ECC has a fund called this Good Samaritan Fund. So it covers up to a certain about $1,000. Initially, and then there’s more needs, then we people can apply for it. So that helped a little bit in in covering some of the costs of treatments. But yeah, of course, it doesn’t cover the whole lot, all of it.
I think also the meal trains people would come by and drop off food. I think that’s a huge thing as well, that thing started up that the meal trains just start up. The first day I was diagnosed and people would just sign up and just bring all types of food for us just serving my family. I mean, I did lose, I did get I did lose taste early on. So there are just a lot that I couldn’t taste, but I just still ate it. Because it’s food is supposed to sustain me. Of course, losing appetite is a tough thing as well
Helicon Kuan: Yeah, losing taste that is not a fun thing. Just imagine in Chipotle, and it tastes like cardboard and like wet paper. I distinctly remember you can feel the spice, but you can’t taste the saltiness and the flavor. And that was just—I like to eat. So that was one of the worst experiences.
Daniel K. Eng: You know, this is this is the kind of thing that I think I think the average person doesn’t know what to say. What would you say to that?
Helicon Kuan: One thing is don’t try to figure out why the person got cancer. Don’t be like, “Oh, maybe you needed to go to the gym more, or maybe it was your dietary habits.” It’s there was no causal link. They say potentially, yeah, there’s a higher likelihood but I had older sisters in our church and the older Chinese ladies, they want to be helpful, but they always want to tell me I’m not healthy. And so they wanted to make a link between my perhaps college young adult life habits and the cancer and that was very unhelpful was one of the most discouraging was just being told, “Oh, yeah, you did this. You could have done better,” and like it was like something that was caused by you. Like there’s a sense of your fault to it. And that was that was painful. That’s one thought. right now.
Steve Moy: I think, yeah, it’s very true. Many people just don’t know because they’re frozen. If they haven’t experienced this within a family member or close friend, they think, “Oh, what do I say? If I say something will that trigger them into some kind of some different stage?”
But I would encourage those people who freeze up a little bit that it’s okay, we’re human. And, and we could take, we can take whatever comes. Yeah. I mean, we’re in the sickness right now. And it’s okay. We know what we know, whether it’s gonna be good or bad, right? It’s okay to say, “Hey, sorry, about having cancer,” but also when I did hear that, “I’m sorry,” I said, “It’s not your fault. You shouldn’t be sorry. It was just my body. This is just something’s happening to me right now. But I appreciate what you’re trying to say. And I appreciate that you did mention it.”
Daniel K. Eng: Any final thoughts as we as we think through how do we come alongside to care for someone with this?
Helicon Kuan: I think, for me, I think there’s a line in Philippians chapter one, I think right before the for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. There’s a section that says, you know, he was comforted by people praying for him. And I think people tell you, they’re praying for you.
When we say that it can seem so casual. But if you actually mean it, if you think about it, that idea of being prayed for means that this person, in the busyness of their own lives, the busyness of their own perspective, they stay pause, and they go to the our infinite God, or Infinite Creator and says, God, I want to pray for this person I care about and to pause in that moment to say, You’re the best thing that can do you that can happen for this friend of mine who needs healing.
And for me to know that you’re being prayed for, saying “Hey, I’ve been praying for you,” I didn’t see that it was something very flippant or dismissive. I thought that was very generous. I was like, “Man, that’s the best thing you could do. You sought God for me. And you would do it in the best of your own workload, life, your busyness, and you would think about me.”
I had so many friends, text me, message me, and send me gifts. But the gifts were small things. But the prayer to me was like that, to this day, I think those are the things I sometimes got me through some hard moments was just a friend calling me late at night, “I’m praying for you right now.” And I’m like, I needed that. Because I felt really depressed. And or right before they told me I’m gonna have to extend my chemo, (which was wrong; the person misdiagnosed it), but I was so sad. And my friend messaged me said, “Hey, I’m praying for you right now.” And I was like, “I needed that so much more than you realized.” And truly it is a comfort.
Steve Moy: Yeah, I agree. That’s such a great thing that we talk about all the time, like prayer is the most, the biggest thing you can do. And then at times, we just don’t, we see it as something very simple, but so powerful. And just knowing that there’s so many people praying for you, wherever, wherever they live.
And then also knowing the community, right? People coming by, like, “Hey, we know you’re sick, but hey, we left something outside for you,” or just knowing that, that people continue to care for you and more support for my family as well. Taking my daughter out, knowing that she might need to be away for me for a bit so I can recover. They would take her to the zoo or to the science center just to keep her distracted a bit. And then when my family came to visit other other people walk alongside them and take them out, allow them to just take their minds off my sickness. Even though I was in the midst of it. So just hearing those stories, and knowing that people are around, so powerful.
Daniel K. Eng: Well, gentlemen, thank you for your time. Steve Moy and Helicon Kuan, everyone. Thank you for sharing your stories. I’m grateful to hear that you are both in good health now and are serving the Lord in pastoral ministry. Thanks again for your time. Bye, everybody.