Welcome to Hope in the Morning, turning tragedies and tears into testimonies of hope. One of the most dreaded diagnoses to receive is cancer. This diagnosis is exponentially more scary when it's your child's. Placing the life of your child into the arms of the Lord with open hands is a trial no parent ever wants to face.
How do you find rest and peace when the unimaginable is now your reality? Joining me to share their son Tucker's story is Rob and Bridget Short. Thank you for joining me today, you guys. Yeah.
Thanks for having us. Can you guys share with our listeners a little bit about what led up to Tucker's diagnosis? Go ahead. Okay.
She knows all the details of that end. Yeah. Leading up to Tucker's diagnosis, we just started seeing some symptoms arise. His cancer was his tumor masses in his sinus cavity. And so we started seeing just kind of like some allergy type symptoms, like some stuffiness for a while. He started getting tired. I started seeing him go pale at different times, lack of appetite.
But the most distinct symptom that we saw was the nose. Going from allergy symptoms, trying allergy medicine to getting progressively worse to where he really couldn't breathe through his nose at all. He was having like some sleep apnea, some retracting while he was sleeping, trying to breathe. And then to the point where he actually couldn't pass any air at all from his nose down.
He could breathe out of his mouth just fine. We could do like a nasal rinse from one side of the nostril to the other. But he could absolutely not get any air in through his nose along with just some very large mucus discharge happening, which led us to just continue to go to doctor appointments and trying to figure out if we needed better medicine or what was going on. And finally, the mask got so large that our pediatrician was able to see it from just looking in his nose. And then she sent us to the ENT. When we got to the ENT, he was very upfront from the get go. You don't go to a doctor very often who will start with, I'm not going to dance around the subject that this could be cancer.
So that's kind of how we started that ENT process to rule out things like adenoids and rule in cancer. How old was Tucker at the time? He was five, turning six. He was five when the symptoms started. He turned six and then, yeah, he was like diagnosis. He was six years old. He turned six in September. Yeah. And then his diagnosis was in November.
Yeah. Can you explain what you both were feeling at the moment of his diagnosis? I don't know if you can like put up a real feeling on it. I am never had to like, I guess I've never thought about it, how I felt in the moment. It was just, it was real. It was heavy.
I don't know. I was very sad. Like it was hard to look at my son and think that I couldn't be in his place, that he had to do it. So that was a hard thing when it happened. Yeah.
So when we knew it was cancer. Yeah. I think I just had a lot of, I think there were feelings of dread.
Like, you know, you have the worst case scenario, like that immediately pops in your head, like faster than you can even imagine. Yeah. You know, and just almost a sense too of like, okay, this is, this is real. This isn't like play. This isn't pretend. This is real life.
It was honestly like my worst nightmare. Yeah. Bridget, what, what did you tell Tucker when that time came that you had to explain to him what was going on? Gosh, what did we tell him? We told him that we knew that something had been going on for a while. He knew that something had been going on for a while. And I think everybody, I, there was no denying that it wasn't a normal sickness.
Yeah. Like you looked at the symptoms, you looked at his physical decline, even without having a name to it. And you knew like something is very, very wrong. And he knew that, you know, he was walking that he was living that. And so we just, we told him that we knew that something was going on, like that he had been sick for a while. We told him what it was called and we told him that we were going to go see some doctors about it and that they were going to give him some very special medicine to try and help him. We tried to keep it as, I guess, low key or minimal in information as possible because he was so young and there was so much still unknown and we didn't want to assign an outcome.
We wanted the Lord to be able to assign that outcome. And I know when we talked to him, when it happened, like there's no cancer was spoken, like the diagnosis, he was in the room with us and he knew the severity of it. But being very, you know, positive in that, you know, we were going to do everything we could to fight it. Like we were with him, we were going to, like that it was curable, like that it was something that could be fought and that, you know, he wasn't alone in it. We were going to be there and his whole family was. But no, no, like I don't remember talking to him about the severity of it. We tried to keep it at his level. And there was a lot of conversations we had that were big conversations that you have with people much later in life that we had with a six-year-old.
You know, some in our pastors were a great help in walking us through some of that. How do you talk to a kid about this stuff when they ask certain questions? And so, but we didn't like just come out and say like, Hey, here's the series. It's serious for sure, but we're going to go and fight it. And it's going to be like the doctors are really smart and try to keep it at the level of his age and understanding. And to this, to this day, like we don't even know what stage it was because when they asked us, do you want us to give you the stage?
We said no. Yeah. And that one was the type that he had also was different.
Like they didn't, they didn't assign typical stages either. Like you get, if you had like a leukemia or, you know, a tumor in a different part of your body, it was different, but it still had, you know, a range. So, So I know in reading your story again, which you guys were so gracious to share your story in written form on the hopeinthemorning.org platform. And our listeners can go and find your full story there written out. But Bridget, something that stuck out to me is that you had mentioned that when you guys were at the hospital with him, that you said that your emotions were colliding with what you knew to be true of God and that you were journaling about that.
What were some of those collisions and some of those battles that you, that you fought? Everything. Does that answer? I think all of those fears that immediately come to your head, you know, how could God let this happen?
This is our son. He doesn't, he doesn't deserve this. You know, fear of the future, fear of what you're facing in the moment. Anger, frustration. Like I literally felt, and I think Robert too, like we felt like every emotion in the book.
Like it was shocking how, just how many things you feel in that time. And yet you know, God to be true. Like I have been a believer since I was a young child.
Praise the Lord for that. And I know him to be good. I know his ways to be perfect.
I know that they are planned out in advance for us. I know that he will give us the strength. I know that my son was made without mistake, which includes all parts of his body. This was not a mistake. I know that the Lord is our comfort, our strength, our peace, our hope, our joy, all of those things.
Yet Satan just tries his hardest to get you to not believe those things, to give you a reason through your circumstance, through the trial, to give you a reason to doubt God's goodness, a reason to doubt his faithfulness, to take away your joy, to take away your hope. And I think that's just what it was. Like all of these feelings, I had to take them back. We had to take them back to scripture and say, these are things that we're feeling. They're very real.
They are, I mean, almost tangible how deeply you feel them. And yet that realness of that feeling does not mean that it's ultimate truth. The truth is that God is good, no matter the circumstances, no matter if you've just received a potential life threatening diagnosis for your child, you know, no matter if you've done everything in your power to keep your children healthy and safe to what, you know, you feel like you've been led to do. And yet God leads you a different direction and says, here's all this other stuff. You know, you still, you have to take that to scripture and that's where you have to land, you know, because that's what's ultimate truth. He is good. He is, his ways are right. And yeah.
Yeah. So was there a scripture that you actually clung to that you're like, okay, this is the truth I'm hanging on to? The whole thing. I'll say the Psalms. The Psalms were big in walking through this. They're almost two-thirds of the Psalms or more are laments.
And, you know, I would tell Bridget, like her blogs, it was you, right? We're almost like laments. If you read them, she's can, you know, expressing her disdain for the situation, not anger towards God, but your David right over and over again about his discomfort in his situation. And then he praises God.
And then he comes to terms with his situation as being where God wants him exactly at that moment. And so for me, you know, the Psalms were a huge encouragement. I read Psalm 33 a lot, not for any particular reason, just happened to be one that I read a lot during those couple of years.
And there's no rhyme or reason for it. It's just one that I read frequently. Hymns were big. I know music was really big because sometimes your heart doesn't want to sit down and read but there's truth in music.
So, yeah, a lot of hymns and whatnot. So, yeah, well, when we come back, we're going to talk about what it looked like to walk with Tucker hand in hand through his treatments and how you navigated walking your other four small children through this tragedy as well. Join us in a moment with Hope in the Morning. Hope in the Morning is a listener sponsored program that encourages the weary, equips those who walk beside them and evangelizes the lost. If you want to partner with this ministry, visit HopeInTheMorning.org. And may you be filled with hope as you continue this episode of Hope in the Morning. Do you want to be equipped to help grieving people to learn what to say and what not to say from people who've walked through various trials? Throughout the month of April, with your donation of any amount, we'd like to send you a free copy of Hope in the Morning, a hope-filled guide through grief. Be encouraged by their stories and equipped to offer hope.
Visit us today at HopeInTheMorning.org. Bridget, you continue in your written story and you say that you cried hot tears, not just as you surrendered your will, but as you surrendered your child to the will of God. What was that like for you walking, walking through those hospital halls with your son as he started going through treatment? What did those days look like for you? What did the days in the hospital look like?
Yeah. So at the hospital and at home, the way that you would minister to Tucker, speak truth to your own heart and to your other children. How many other children do you guys have?
We have four other children, so five total. It just, I think it just looked like the way that we speak truth to our own hearts, right? Speaking truth to our children and letting them express what they're feeling, asking them for what they're thinking, what they're feeling. It's big feelings. It's big thoughts. And sometimes they don't know how to express it. I mean, I don't know how to express it.
We had trouble communicating what we were feeling like, let alone being a child and trying to grasp that, trying to know yourself well enough to understand what you're thinking, to be able to then tell somebody else. And then when having those conversations, just being able to point them back to, to scripture and to who God is, because like I said before, like that's where we land as believers and that's our hope. We can have all of the feelings and it's not too big for God.
It's not surprising to Him. He is walking before us, walking beside us through this journey. And we need to express that. We need to bring that before Him, before His feet. And we need to be counseled by His word. And so that's just really what we did with the kids, just trying to mirror what we were trying to do with our own hearts is, you know, like give them a place to talk about it, to let it be real, let them feel it, let them have questions and concerns and then say, okay, what does God say about this? And who is He? And how is He going to walk with us?
And how can we find our hope and our security in Him in the midst of this very uncertain and terrifying time, you know? I think it was also something I talked to the kids about is it was, it's okay to not be okay about this. I mean, we're saying like, hey, we trust that God is sovereign over all things and we believe that truth. But if given the choice, I would not choose this. Like I wouldn't choose it.
I'd take it all back, give it away. And I think it's okay to wrestle with that as Christians. It's always like, oh, God's sovereign. You know, I trust the Lord. It's like, yeah, but I'm just really don't like this. Like just very real.
I don't like this. And letting God know that and like walking our kids through that is it was, I think a healthy thing. It's, we don't get to choose our circumstances all the time. Some of our circumstances in life are because of our own sin. Some are because of sin just being in the world. And this one is because sin is in the world. Like Tucker didn't do anything wrong.
He wasn't speeding in his car and hit somebody, you know, like being negligent. He was just a person that got cancer and cancer exists because of sin. So walking the kids through just that big worldview was, yeah. And I think also like Robert and I were just praying a lot for discernment of how to shepherd our children. They're all unique and they all struggled in different ways and continue to have different ways of dealing with what we've gone through as a family. And just praying that the Lord would open our eyes to them individually and seeing where it is that they needed to be shepherded.
And the Lord is so faithful. He does that. I remember one time leaving the hospital with Tucker in the backseat of the car and he was just really, his attitude had been off. And I just, I was driving from the fourth level of the parking lot and I pulled over and I just felt so strongly that I needed to talk to him. And I asked him like Tucker, you know, I pulled over and helped him with a seatbelt. You know, how are you doing? Are you okay?
Like, are you thinking about anything in particular? And he blurted out like he was scared to die. Those are big thoughts coming from a six year old, big feelings. And I could have easily just continued the drive home could have easily overlooked his, you know, his angst. And yet the Lord, I believe because we've been, you know, praying for discernment, he gave that and he let me know, like, Hey, you need to, you need to walk with your child right now. And so we were able to talk about that and we were able to kind of put some of that fear to rest and instead go back and know that, you know, in the midst of this, like we could trust the Lord and that the outcome is the Lord's in that.
And that no matter what happened, he would be faithful and he would be good. And those times are. Yeah. Did you find that that was a fear that you had to hand over to the Lord on a daily basis?
Moment by moment basis. Yeah. I mean, walking through the living room, seeing him on the couch and you know, not doing well.
It's the first thing that comes to mind. You know, how long is he here? What, what is it going to look like in a year and two years, even now, you know, he's in remission, praise the Lord for a year now. And, um, and doing so well, but still there are fears that arise that you have to hand over to the Lord. I mean, continuing again from your, from your written story, you had talked about how the, the tumor that was in his sinuses, when it put pressure on his optic nerve, can you just talk to us about that a little bit?
I mean, I, I don't know. I was never in the room more than a couple of times with the doctors when we got big news. I was there for the diagnosis and I remember how that made me feel, um, all the emotions with that.
And then I remember when I heard, um, about him being blind in his right eye and he'd never see again out of that. And that was almost, I mean, if it could be equal to like as devastating to news, it was almost not quite obviously cancer is way bigger. Um, but that was hard to hear.
Um, is this just, it's life changing. There's a lot of, you know, optimism as you're fighting it to go, okay, this is going to work. Like he's going to get better.
A lot of people get better, but to hear that it's like, even if he gets better, that's gone. Um, that was hard for me. That was really hard, uh, to hear.
So those are my only feelings. I wasn't in the room though. When that was given, I get that second hand because I was with the other kids most of the time. So can you tell us really quick where he falls in birth order in your five kids?
He is our fourth, fourth out of five. Okay. Yeah. So how old, how old was your oldest at the time? 13.
I can't do the math. Well, she's 15 now. Okay. So you were shepherding five little kids from 13 under those are, those are some very pivotal years. And of course I think any parent would think that that was a very scary situation to go through your child being diagnosed with potential lifelong blindness, um, changes their whole world. And so that catapulted a quicker treatment plan, correct? It did.
Yeah. When we went to that ophthalmology appointment and they said, you know, his optic nerve is completely white. They had to explain that to me and they explained it as it's completely dead. There is absolutely no transmission going through from his eye to his brain and it will never recover is what the ophthalmologist said.
She said, I don't want to give you any hope that he will ever get any vision back. Um, but that did let them know how severe the swelling was from the, the tumor. And instead of us starting chemotherapy for about six weeks, um, was it six sessions? Well, April, we were going to start radiation much later, right? I think it was like halfway through the chemotherapy treatment that they were going to do radiation. Um, instead we did one day, one cycle of chemotherapy and jumped right into six weeks of radiation. Um, and you know, it was so hard, but there are so many blessings in that, like the Lord's timing. It was not what the doctors intended at all, not what any of us expected, but his body, um, responded so well to it.
He didn't have nearly any of the side effects that they were expecting him to have. Um, and at the end of that, you know, I, the Lord used that to lessen the swelling and, um, we went back. Well, it was in the middle of, it was like during the first couple of weeks, cause I remember the house we were in, cause we bounced around from different Airbnbs and Phoenix, like during treatment, we were specifically in this one over right up till Christmas, like Christmas Eve or something. We were in this one specific house.
And so it was in the very beginning of radiation is the why I say that. So, um, no, he was sitting there in this house and he just looked at us and he said, mom and dad, I can see, I can see. And we went, what, like, are you sure? And he said, yeah, I can see out of my eye. And we went back and you know, we had left that original ophthalmology appointment, like sad, you know, and kind of like worried about what was the Lord going to do with this. And yet there the Lord was like, so, I mean, blessing us, you know, like nobody could restore that site other than the Lord, even with the radiation treatment that they were hoping would, you know, reduce swelling in size.
Like it wasn't that even with that, the doctors did not think that he would regain his site and he did. And that's just, you know, completely the Lord. Um, and to be able to tell him now, like, and to tell people like, look what the Lord has done, you know, that's just a super cool thing to, you know, when I look at the Psalm that you have clung onto, right? You said Psalm 33 and verse four says, for the word of the Lord is right. And all of his works are done in truth.
That's a pretty difficult verse to grab hold of at the beginning of this, I would think, but as I'm listening to the story, you know, unfold, I can't help but think, wow, his works really started to come out, didn't they? Yeah. You did.
Yeah. I feel like time and time again, you know, things went awry. Things went as unplanned. I mean, I had our oncologist multiple times throughout his treatment say, this is not, this is not normal. Like this stuff is not normal to the, these cases. And, um, and, and yet we were able to just say like, look what the Lord is doing in this, you know? So I almost, you know, I get a sense that as you were doing the Psalms, it was really helpful to me to think you were praying. Right. And the Lord kind of, as I listened to this, you said that this answer big time to the prayers that were going on at the time.
Yeah. I mean, somebody just asked me the other day, you know, why I wrote in our Caring Bridge and how I was able to, you know, put things into words. And I told them, like, it was just so that the main goal for that, honestly, was for us to share what we were going through, um, for people that were, you know, near and far, but to see what the Lord was doing and like to ask for prayer, I'm like a big proponent of like, whatever is going on. Like, I want people to know, because like, I want that prayer. And I cannot tell you how powerful it was like, I mean, many times we would put something up and say, would you please pray for this? And there would be a distinct answer to prayer, you know, and to be able to share that with other people too. And, and say like, you guys prayed and like the Lord answered.
Yeah. You know, I love how you said at, at the end of your story, again, the written story that you did for hope in the morning on the website, you said, we still don't know how it will end, but we know one thing for sure that he who has led us here is faithful and we can trust him no matter what. And you two have been such a beautiful testimony of trusting the Lord, no matter what, with your most precious possession, your child, holding open hands and having a heart of hope, even in your morning. Thank you so much for joining us today and for sharing your story and your testimony.
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