“Healing means to me the ability to continue, the ability to be there for my family, the ability to encourage others to continue in the faith. Healing represents victory. Healing represents triumph over trials. Healing represents hope over despair. Me being healed lets me know that come whatever may, there is always a chance for victory. I only lose when I don’t follow through, I don’t go to the doctor, I don’t get treatment – that’s the only way that I lose because I chose not to get in the game,” said Bishop Christopher Stokes, who has survived three bouts with cancer.
This National Cancer Survivors Month, Stokes shared his story, encouraging others to make their health a priority. Stokes was diagnosed with stage 3 prostate cancer after a regular checkup revealed an elevated PSA level. He later underwent surgery to remove his prostate and 42 rounds of radiation therapy.
“My fight now has always been to educate men,” said Stokes, pastor of The New Beginning Christian Worship Center in Micanopy and a pastor-scientist with the UF Health Cancer Institute’s Community-Partnered Cancer Disparities Research Collaborative. “My overall message is, ‘You got to go see the doctor. There’s got to be at least one person in your life that you love enough to take care of yourself.’ If I’m talking to a group of men, I’m going to close my message with going to see the doctor because prostate cancer is a cancer you don’t have to die from. And yet, men still die from prostate cancer.”
“There’s got to be at least one person in your life that you love enough to take care of yourself.” – Bishop Christopher Stokes
Stokes’ friend, also a pastor, died of prostate cancer.
“I absolutely know that God is a healer and I do have faith,” he said. “But I also understand that God put people in place so that while I’m praying, that my prayer can be answered through people. God saved me, but he used doctors to discover it; he used doctors to do the surgery. All of those people had a hand in my healing. It is great to have faith, it is necessary, but we also have to put it into works.”
His message is simple: “Either you’re going to be a survivor or you’re going to be casualty.”
Stokes has made it his mission to share his story. Once, after catching up with a young man he hadn’t seen in a while and sharing what he had been going through, the man was motivated to visit a doctor. The appointment revealed he had early-stage colon cancer.
“Having that conversation in the Office Depot parking lot was the thing that made him go to the doctor,” Stokes said. “I’ve had conversations with people where they say, ‘I just don’t want to know.’ But why would you not want to know? If you had won $1 million, you would want someone to tell you. If you had lost $1 million, you would want somebody to tell you. We’ve got to learn how to put ourselves in the same position you put everything else. If I was to ask when the last time you had an oil change was, you could tell me, when the last time you put tires on your car, you could tell me. Yet, the most important question we don’t want to answer is about our health.”
Stokes also encourages men to bring a spouse or trusted friend to doctor’s appointments to help process information and ask questions.
He knows firsthand the side effects of cancer treatment, the health issues that can dog survivors years later. In prostate cancer, sexual side effects of treatment can contribute to feelings of inadequacy.
That’s why seeking out high-quality information is essential, Stokes said. Last month, Stokes served as a panelist at one of the Cancer Institute’s Power Over Cancer Gatherings at Springhill Church, which aim to empower people with knowledge, support and resources.
“In cancer in general, we don’t arm ourselves with enough information and so we don’t seek treatment or we get advice from somewhere else,” Stokes said. “I fought with depression, I fought with inadequacies, but the thing I contribute where I am is that I had an undying faith. One of the things I always say to people is, ‘You may know more than me, you may be more educated me, but you will never out-faith me.’ In spite of everything that I’ve gone through, each time I’ve come out better. I refuse to be bitter when I could be better.”
“I refuse to be bitter when I could be better.”
