EXCLUSIVE: John Paul Jackson Shares Intimate Details of Cancer Surgery
John Paul Jackson, perhaps best known for his prophetic dream interpretations, was diagnosed with cancer in May. Doctors found a large, aggressive cancerous growth in his leg that demanded immediate treatment.
Now, he’s offering Charisma News an exclusive update on his progress in a battle he vowed to fight on his knees. Jackson tells us the surgery was like a double-edged sword: It went better than he thought, but it also served up a major dilemma.
“The dilemma was that the tumor turned out to go much deeper than the doctors thought from the MRI, PET scan and CAT scan,” Jackson says. “That posed extreme danger to the sciatic nerve.”
The good news, he shares, is the swelling was not a bad as the doctors originally thought. That means Jackson only has to undergo one operation instead of two.
Through it all, Jackson tells us God’s hand is on his life—and the operation is proof positive. The surgery took two surgeons 5.5 hours. The incision ran 28 inches and required 175 stitches, three muscle flaps and two muscle grafts to remove what Jackson calls one “nerf-football”-sized malignant tumor that weighed 12 pounds.
“Between the cancer diet I am on and the loss of weight from the tumor, I am down to 170 pounds. I do have a very large indentation in the rear of my left leg,” Jackson says.
“To God’s glory they were able to save the sciatic nerve. While I will walk with a limp, I will have full function of my leg. It has been a week since my surgery, and I will be in for another two weeks, going through rehab. Learning to walk again, and strengthen[ing] the leg, since I lost 80 percent of my hamstring and 40 percent of my buttocks. God is faithful and just, and I am alive due to that truth.”
