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This Sickness Is Not Unto Death - Norman Tanner Healed from Cancer, ###xx ###xx ###xx, Knoxville, TN (2026)

03/20/2026

Once Norman walked away from treatment there were physical difficulties for months.

He didn't just walk away from immunotherapy, he also walked away from all the medications he had been put on cold turkey, needless to say that isn't always advisable.

This is the part where I let everybody know that I am not advocating for anyone to follow this same path and I am not anti medical intervention.

Norman and I both believe firmly that the initial treatments that he received were not only necessary but life saving.

However, I am advocating for being led by the Lord over any other voices.

If the Lord says go left & the entire medical assembly says go right, I can tell you which path will lead to deliverance, every time.

For He knows the plans He has for you - doctors don't know, you don't even necessarily know, but He; God knows, so why allow anyone else's voice to take precedence over your very creator?

Psalm 31:15 My times are in Your hand...

03/19/2026

I've gotten ahead of myself. The last post was about one of the worst days on this journey but a few months prior to that Father's Day was the day Norman made the decision to walk away from treatment.

It was March, 2018, his last immunotherapy was January 2018 and he was scheduled for it again today.

The oncologist came in for a brief check in before Norman would go for the infusion.

When he asked Norman how he was doing, Norman's response was that he didn't have a day that he wasn't sick anymore, the doctor replied, 'that's the Opdivo'.

Norman remembers that at this point he told him it was no longer working & suggested switching to Keytruda.

I just remember Norman saying he was tired of being sick and the doctor responded without any emotion at all, 'well, you can quit, it's up to you'.

To which Norman asked, 'how would I have a shot at a normal life span? Continuing treatment or stopping?'

The oncologist, answered just as flippantly as if we were discussing the weather, 'You don't.'

When asked for clarification he said more directly, 'You don't have a shot for a normal life span.'

Hmmm...

But thing is...I read in the BIBLE...

With long life will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation..

And, even to your old age I am He, and even to gray hairs I will carry you..

So therein lies the contradiction.

Norman knew this day was coming, he will tell you that he had a word from the Lord in the very beginning that there would be a day doctors told him the treatment was no longer working and it was going to be him & the Lord from there on out.

In that room, March 2018. he heard the Lord whisper 'today is that day.'

He looked at the oncologist and said 'I'm done'.

Needless to say, there were all manner of warnings & terrible prognosis if he went that route but none of it has come to pass.

The Lord is faithful who promised and He has the final say.

Every. Time.

03/16/2026

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1

Norman's health was definitely a thing not seen on Father's Day 2018, it was an awful day.

The kids had come over to honor him on his day, but he was too sick to sit up for more than a few minutes at a time.

He kept going to lay down then getting back up & trying to visit with them but he just couldn't.

The concern & worry on their faces was heartbreaking, they'd been around of course, but, this was probably one of the worst bouts they witnessed.

I rattled my usual, 'Dad's good, he's healed, he's having a rough day today but he's really doing great overall and he'll be much better tomorrow.'

One of them said, 'Mom that's all you ever say'.

It was. They were right.

But this time, I wasn't seeing it, I wasn't feeling it, and on this day I might have even been having a hard time believing it.

And don't think for a second that the devil doesn't see days like this as an opportune time, believe me he was screaming terrible things in my ear.

At the end of the day, the kids had gone, Norman was sleeping & the house was quiet.

The Lord met me in the garage in the midst of a little breakdown.

It was one of the hardest days.

For Norman, for the kids, and for me.

You know what the Lord said in that quiet dark garage?

You have to put him on the altar.

Not, it's ok, it's all going to be alright.
Not, he'll be better tomorrow just like you said.

Just put him on the altar and trust me. Even when you can't see it, even when you're not feeling it and having a very hard time walking it.

Because faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things NOT seen.

03/11/2026

Norman could tell you the many many physical struggles he went through during this battle better than I can.

But one that he shared with me has stayed with me all these years later.

It was one of those days when he was at the end of his rope, sick from cancer, sick from treatment, sick from the medication given to offset the sickness from both, and unable to get out of bed.

While drifting in & out of a fitful sleep he dreamed that he was at the top of a mountain in the middle of a horrendous storm holding onto a tree for dear life.

He realized all he could manage was to hold on; not to get up, not to move forward, just hold on. He told the Lord, 'Lord, all I can do is hold on to you with what strength I have left'

And the Lord replied, 'that is all you have to do, the enemy can't force you to move, he can only convince you to move'.

What a revelation... the only power the devil has over Christians is the power of persuasion.

Of course that's all he has, 1 Peter 5:8 tells us he's looking for whom he MAY devour.

That doesn't mean there aren't hard things to go through, obviously, but it means that he does not have the ability to devour us if we know and operate in the authority the Lord gave us in His word.

So, no matter the battle, dig your heals in, and REFUSE to let go of the promises of God.

By His stripes you WERE healed, and if you were healed then you are healed. It was accomplished over 2000 years ago when Jesus said it is finished.

03/05/2026

Below is a page from my prayer journal dated 3/11/2018.

Norman's last immunotherapy treatment was January 2018.

It lists all the maladies he was dealing with either from the cancer or from the treatment of the cancer.

One by one God healed them. Some took months, some took years but now the are an unpleasant memory. We marked them out once they were no longer an issue.

It wasn't instant, but it was sure.

He is faithful who promised!

03/03/2026

What is this sickness that exalts itself above My Name?

That's what the Lord said to me way back in 1992.

I was in a church service where prayer requests were being taken, out of about 12 requests, probably 8 or 9 of them were for someone or someone's loved one dealing with cancer.

As I turned to kneel and pray, as plain as I've ever heard the Lord, He said those words.

What is this sickness that exalts itself above My Name?

It's been 34 years since I heard that.

34 years to digest it and see over and over again that cancer does exalt itself, again and again above the name of God for a lot of people.

Once it's spoken, fear sets in, the future is so uncertain, and death becomes an imminent concern.

But I'm here to tell you that cancer is a liar. God is still in control, He still holds your future and He absolutely has the final say.

Here's the thing though, it is a battle, and this is not the time to have a casual relationship with the Lord.

Draw near to Him and He will draw near to you. You need His strength, His direction, and His wisdom to defeat this monster.

It is absolutely doable, but not in and of yourself.

Submit yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time. 1 Peter 5:6

02/27/2026

During Norman's cancer battle some folks might have called me crazy, or thought I'd gone mad.

I prefer the word zealous, lol.

I knew this was as much a spiritual fight as a physical one and to that end I came in hot alot of times.

I'm fairly certain his oncologist was not particularly fond of me, I was determined no matter what the report was, for every visit that God would have the final say. It was never a sermon, lol, just a scripture, spoken as sweetly as I could if I remember correctly.

It wasn't personal, I did the same in every text I sent out updating the kids after every visit.

I also taped index cards on the mattress under the sheets with healing scriptures on them, so every night the man was sleeping on the promises of God. He wasn't aware until they got old & crinkly.

I wrote out a decree that Norman was healed & listed all the scriptures that proved it, had it framed and hung on the wall.

I shot down anything anybody said that indicated the end to this journey was going to be anything other than perfect restoration.

I did away with a long term disability policy because they wanted a medical statement from the doctors office & that statement said his condition was terminal. Nope, shredded it, didn't need it that bad anyway.

Our circle got small, people didn't know how to take me.

But God did.

The just shall live be faith and the proof is in the pudding.

02/26/2026

So we settled into a pattern of Opdivo infusions at first every 2 weeks and eventually once a month.

The oncologist told us that 'most people' had little to no side effects.

It didn't take us long to figure out that Norman wasn't 'most people'.

And it's hard to imagine he was alone in that given the pages of possible side effects listed in a simple Google search.

Without fail, he'd have the infusion and within a couple of days be so sick he could hardly move. On the biweekly schedule he would barely get better and it was time to do it again.

To say it was a depressing time would be the ultimate understatement.

He was pale, lethargic, frequently dehydrated, low blood pressure, unable to eat and when he did eat he couldn't taste anything except chocolate of all things.

Needless to say, between me and the kids he had a constant supply of any and everything chocolate; milk, pudding, milkshakes, ice cream, you name it...

I had to work, it was a struggle, when I left in the morning the house was dark & quiet, when I came home in the evening still dark & quiet. All he could do was rest. We put a camera inside so I could watch him because most days he was too sick to even respond to a text.

But here's the thing; the battle belongs to the Lord. Perhaps that promise never rings more true than when you're not only unable to fight, but you're unable to even think about fighting.

And you know that if the battle belongs to the Lord, eventually victory is certain.

02/25/2026

Norman was scheduled to have 4 biweekly treatments of the Opdivo and Yervoy together but they stopped at 3 because the Yervoy was so hard on him.

The plan was to continue on with Opdivo only but there was a snag, his liver enzymes were too high even for the next dose of Opdivo.

This was a major concern to us because of the terrible shape his liver was in. We were told it was 90% cancer & 10% liver.

So we prayed, I googled every way I could think to find an answer; high liver enzyme causes, why would someone's liver have high enzymes, what does high enzymes mean for the liver....

Then one night I had a dream, it was really about a whole lot of nothing, pieces parts of different places and people. But in that dream as plain as day my brother David A Shepherd was standing in a crowd of people and he turned, looked at me and said 'His liver enzymes are high because of the Yervoy, when that gets out of his system they'll go down. '

Crazy thing was, I had never even spoken to my brother about Yervoy or enzymes or anything of the sort. As far as I know, he wasn't even aware of what type of treatment Norman had.

As sure as the Lord is faithful, at the next doctors appointment the oncologist walked in the room and said those exact words my brother had spoken. 'His liver enzymes are high because of the Yervoy, when that gets out of his system they'll go down' and then we'll proceed.

Time would fail for me to share all the other times the Lord spoke to us and gave us wisdom beyond our learning, sometimes in a dream, sometimes at the very moment we needed it.

Again I'm telling you, it has nothing to do with Norman, or me, or even this particular battle. He is the friend who sticks closer than a brother and He wants a relationship with you.

02/24/2026

I would be lying if I typed post after post about the wins throughout this fight without slowing down to share a bit of the anguish.

In truth, the Lord delivered, time after time, but there were days when all Norman could manage was going from the bed to the recliner then back to bed.

The oncologist had put him on strong steroids to manage the headaches early on. They did help with the headaches but, boy did they come with their own side effects.

And after putting him on them the oncologist repeatedly told us he was afraid they would hinder the effectiveness of the immunotherapy so Norman needed to come off of them. And so he did... stopped taking them... cold turkey...

Between the Yervoy and stopping those steroids is how he ended up in the hospital for a week.

Remember, we are not medical people, we didn't know that he needed a step down regimen and were never advised to that effect, just 'you need to stop taking those steroids'.

I've noticed over the years that one of the devils strategies is to come at someone from a lot of different directions all at once.

This was one of those times. I won't go into all the things that we were dealing with during that hospitalization but one of them was that I was sick with a miserable sinus infection.

That's another one of the devil's strategies, disable the pray-ers.

But. God.

The Lord ever lives to make intercession for us and I know that even in these miserable, confusing trying times when neither of us could hardly think straight He was upholding us and we had an army of good folks praying for us too.

It was during that hospital stay that we were told that the immunotherapy was working, there was significant shrinking of the tumors.

Norman was sent home and put back on the steroids. He would stay on them at varying strengths for the next year.

Remember I said they had their own very ugly side effects. We would find out that they were another beast to fight but for now we had at least some good news and fell into an undesirable routine of treatment and medication.

02/23/2026

Once we had the diagnosis and the treatment plan we had to determine what came first.

Urologist said bladder surgery, radiation oncologist said laser radiation therapy 3x a week for 6 weeks, oncologist said immunotherapy.

It was overwhelming to say the least. We asked the Lord to direct our steps, we were lost in a thick forest of medical jargon that we did not understand.

Direct our steps He did. We went with immunotherapy first and that decision was the wisest we could have made.

However, We had been told that the immunotherapy could not cross the blood barrier to the brain and that it had not been an approved treatment for the bladder.

All I can tell you is that after the first 2 treatments scans showed that the lesions in those areas were gone. Gone! Not decreased, but G.O.N.E.

To God be the glory! Had we chosen any other order of treatments there were a slew of complications that could have happened but the Lord led and those surgeries/ therapies weren't even necessary.

That combination of Opdivo/Yervoy was extremely difficult on Norman though. He ended up in the hospital for a week, one of the hardest weeks in our lives.

Details to come.

02/21/2026

When our general practioner sent the scans to an oncologist in Oak Ridge & referred Norman for an appointment stat... absolutley nothing happened, no phone call, no appointment, for over a week.

Can we talk about the misery in the waiting for a minute? The not knowing. The no plan of action, no official diagnosis, just, 'it looks like cancer, it's bad, it's several places' and then nothing.

You might think a week is nothing, but a week with that kind of bomb in your lap is an eternity.

Come to find out, the Oak Ridge office lost the scans. They ended up calling several weeks later but by then our GP had sent us to Tennova.

In hindsight we could see what the Lord was doing. We ended up where we were supposed to end up.

A biopsy was done and we finally had the official diagnosis.

The oncologist said stage IV metastatic melanoma and there is no stage V.

This Sickness Is Not Unto Death - Norman Tanner Healed from Cancer

03/20/2026

03/19/2026

03/16/2026

03/11/2026

03/05/2026

03/03/2026

02/27/2026

02/26/2026

02/25/2026

02/24/2026

02/23/2026

02/21/2026

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