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Liberty pre-med student believes his battle with cancer helped set new perspective on life and faith

For most college students, summer break is about relaxing on the beach, not facing challenging chemotherapy cancer treatments.

Brian Johnson, a Liberty senior and pre-med student, said the unexpected diagnosis of colon cancer right before spring break in March of 2018 didn’t seem real.

“It almost felt like an out-of-body experience,” Johnson said. “I still remember every detail of when the doctor came in and told me about it. I was in the emergency room at 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning. I remember that ear-ringing feeling like in the movies.”

Johnson was working a 10-hour shift at Lynchburg General Hospital when he started to feel progressively worse with flu-like symptoms, including a 102-degree fever.

After waiting hours in the ER, Johnson received word that the doctors had found a tumor, and a colonoscopy and biopsy later revealed the tumor was cancerous. Quickly following the diagnosis came surgery to remove his lymph nodes and over 4 feet of his colon, then chemotherapy treatments which Johnson called “mentally and emotionally taxing.”

While receiving the chemotherapy treatments, Johnson had a negative reaction to a medication which caused an inflamed colon, a condition called auto-immune colitis. This reaction resulted in a three-week hospital stay during which time his diet was severely restricted.

“That was the toughest part of it all,” he said. “It was the very beginning of my summer break and it would just get worse and worse every day. It felt like it was never going to end, and emotionally it was my lowest point.”

Despite the difficulty of facing cancer at a young age, Johnson said he was incredibly thankful for the support of his family, friends and community at Liberty. His dormmates worked with the LU Shepherd office to sell T-shirts as a fundraiser, and his professors worked to help him finish both the spring and fall semesters.

“All my professors were super accommodating for me and told me to take as much time as I needed.”

Another surprising source of support came through Liberty student Cory Owens, who also experienced cancer after his senior year of high school.

Johnson and Owens were connected through a mutual friend and Owens explained he wanted to help Johnson with “normalizing” some of the challenging social and emotional aspects of cancer.

Owens said the strong spiritual community at Liberty was a factor in bringing them together, and talking to other people going through cancer gave him a new perspective on his own experience. He says Liberty creates a culture where “it doesn’t matter who you are, you can connect anyone with anyone.”

“You kind of see the purpose of your suffering and see God use it in a big way,” said Owens. “My experience was during a season of my unfaithfulness in which the Lord was still so faithful, so now I can look back and see the Lord giving me opportunities that I never would have had otherwise.”

Brian enjoyed talking to those who shared his experience, including his own surgeon who talked with him for over two hours about the cancer. An aspiring medical student, Johnson said going through cancer has helped him. “There is now a huge new group of people I can relate to.”

Since finishing chemotherapy in late 2018, Johnson has been cancer free for over a year.

“I think if I could go back and change it or keep it from happening I don’t think I would,” he said. “I think the positives that came out of it were phenomenal. When you are faced with anything like that, it kind of forces you to think ‘What is important, what do I want out of life?’ With something like that, you have no choice but to trust in God. There was literally nothing I could do but go to God. It also helps you realize just how transient this life is, and to see the things that don’t really matter in eternity.”

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