Her Diagnosis Was Defeating: "Terminal Cancer"

“There was no hope. Nobody gave me any report that was positive. And I just pleaded for my life.”

In 2022, J.R. Raine was diagnosed with an aggressive type of non-Hodgkins’s lymphoma in her spleen. The cancer was caught early, so doctors believed a splenectomy would be curative.

“We were very optimistic at that point that the cancer was gone,” says J.R. “The doctors felt very confident.”

However, over the next few weeks, J.R. began experiencing symptoms that intensified with each passing day.

“It was a scary time. I lost quite a bit of weight” she recalls. “I wasn't eating, wasn't sleeping, just in pain all the time.”

A new PET scan in January 2023 revealed the lymphoma had spread and metastasized to her pancreas and other organs, and that wasn’t all. J.R.’s daughter, Becca, explains.

“It had developed into stage four cancer during those couple of months. And the main part of the cancer tumor had actually impaled itself through her stomach wall and created a large hole that was plugged up by part of the cancer tumor itself, if you can imagine a cork in a wine bottle. With the scope, he could actually see straight from her stomach through to the cancer because that much of her stomach wall was gone. The hole was too large to heal on its own, and it was too ill-positioned to be surgically repaired.”

J.R. was stunned. ‘“I said to him, ‘There must be someone that knows how to fix this situation in my stomach, even if you can't.’ And he said to me, ‘No one will be able to repair that hole.’”

There were no good options. Surgery to remove the cancer from J.R.’s stomach and other organs would kill her. Chemo might shrink the cancer; however, the hole would then leak stomach contents into her abdomen, causing fatal sepsis. To top it off, J.R. carried a gene that made her resistant to the type of chemo needed. Her family consulted other specialists, and they all agreed. With or without treatment, she wouldn’t survive.

“The more reports I got, the more frightened I got,” J.R. recalls, “I was in so much pain. I would just writhe in pain.”

“There really wasn't anything that they could do,” says Becca, “It was a nightmare.  I was angry. I was confused. I was upset.

I didn't know how to process what was going on. I went home that day and I just wept before God.  ‘Your word promises longevity,’ I said, ‘Please just keep your promise.’”

‘“I was begging God for help,” J.R. says, ‘“Please, Lord, help me because I don't want to leave my husband and my daughter.’”

Becca refused to give up hope. Research led her to Dr. Richard Sollazzo, a board-certified hematologist-oncologist.

“It was a tough decision for me to take her on as a patient because she was so advanced,” Dr. Sollazzo recalls. “But I had experience with a technique called IPT, insulin potentiation therapy, and it was very effective with lymphoma.”

Under Dr. Sollazzo’s care, J.R. began IPT, an alternative treatment that uses insulin with low-dose chemotherapy. Dr. Sollazzo explains:

“Insulin potentiation therapy is based on the fact that cancer cells have a thousand to ten thousand more insulin receptor sites on their outer cell surface. An insulin receptor site is like a door into the cell. The problem with chemotherapy is collateral damage. You're trying to kill the cancer, but you're hurting the patient at the same time. So, insulin potentiation is a targeting tool. It opens up those insulin receptor sites, so now the chemo can get into it. You target the cancer cells, so you don't have to use as much of the chemo to kill them. So, there's less side effects and more efficacy.”

“I was hopeful that the cancer would be helped, but the hole in the stomach was the mystery, because the doctors were very sure it was never going to heal on its own. Dr. Sollazzo had me on a strict anti-cancer diet, but mostly what we did was just pray the word of God over and over and over,” J.R. recalls.

“I had my list of healing scriptures, and I would just pick multiple times, multiple locations that we would declare and speak out loud over her circumstance every single day for months, like her spiritual medicine,” adds Becca.

“When Becca would speak them, I could actually feel changes in my body. It calmed my spirit. It helped me to keep moving forward, and it helped me to realize that God was in this with me.”

Becca kept speaking God’s word over her mother, even when they didn’t see results.

“I would get really upset about it and God would just give me this still small, subtle peace inside. He would say to me, ‘Don't let what you see make you forget what I said.’”

“Little by little, I could do a little more; I could eat a little more,” J. R. says.

A few months later, when J.R. went in for more tests, she didn’t get her hopes up.

“We were praying,” Becca says, “And then the gastroenterologist herself comes running out. She said, ‘The hole is gone.

The cancer inside of her stomach is gone.’ She took a biopsy of the lining of my mom's stomach to see if there were any microscopic cancer cells there. There was no cancer.  It was like night and day. She said, "This is not the same stomach."’

“I was elated, but still with trepidation. I wasn't quite sure of the long term,” J.R. remembers.

“It just felt like the most amazing gift,” says Becca. “Words can't even express the joy.”

Dr. Sollazzo agrees. “The results were phenomenal. She's doing very well, disease-free.”

Becca adds, “God intervened and healed that hole. He made everything happen simultaneously, so there'd be no gap between the cancer tumor and the hole. It couldn't have happened naturally without God's intervention.”

J.R. has been cancer-free for more than three years. She and Becca want everyone to know that speaking God’s promises aloud is key to seeing miracles happen.

“God set up the spoken word to be a power activator,” Becca declares. “Our spiritual medicine is the word of God. And even to this day, we're just in awe of God and what he did for my mom.”

“Spirituality helps survival, and it helps quality of life,” Dr. Sollazzo observes. “That's a fact; there's studies on it. So, I think spirituality, positive mindset, faith, is huge.”

“I'm so grateful to the Lord,” J.R. exclaims. “My God. My God is how I got healed. And his word. That's how I was healed.”