By Paula Day

The modern patient undergoing a bone marrow transplant truly understands the biblical image of walking in the valley of death.

Doctors bring the patient to death's door in a calculated risk that the patient will not only survive but be healed. But the path into the valley and back is torturous and fearful.

"My life was saved by the prayer of the Church," Father Ken Bayer, MSFS, says simply of his experience. The Norcross pastor underwent chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant in September at Emory University Hospital and is now regaining his strength in the rectory of St. Patrick's parish.

Father Bayer says he was in a state of shock when he was told June 9 he had chronic myelocytic leukemia. The 43-year-old priest got the news after a routine check-up in preparation for a planned trip to Thailand. He seemed in the best of health, playing and winning at racquetball two or three times a week.

"Everyone's first question is 'How long do I have to live?'" the priest says. "There's no denying the diagnosis. But defying the cancer, yes!" He wanted to know if anyone with his set of circumstances had not merely survived, but gone on to be healed. When the answer was "yes," he decided to fight the disease. He was in the early stages of a cancer that if left untreated would be fatal.

"For the patient odds mean nothing," Father Bayer pointed out. "There's no such thing as living 65 percent. You either live or you don't live. And you won't live one second longer or one second shorter than God wants you to."

The treatment amounts to killing the patient's diseased blood and replacing it with a healthy supply obtained by transplanting bone marrow from another person. The transplanted marrow manufactures completely new blood. In Father Bayer's case, his blood type is no longer A negative, but B positive, the blood type of the donor, his sister, Christine Bayer.

There were monumental hurdles to overcome. Finding a donor was just the first. Father Bayer was fortunate because he has nine siblings and one sister was found to be a perfect match.

For Ms. Bayer there was never any question of not agreeing. "I would do it again," she said in a telephone interview. "It was a wonderful experience."

A St. Louis resident, she came to Atlanta for the surgery and said her only concern was that if the transplant did not succeed, she would be here alone with her dying brother. "But I was also thrilled. It was new and different and exciting." She was frightened, too. She had been told the process would be "excruciating" but "it was nothing. I gave birth to a 43-year-old man. Rarely does a person get the chance to live up to one's ideals."

After finding a suitable donor the next hurdle was taking lethal doses of chemicals to kill the cancerous cells.

Beginning September 7 Father Bayer received the anti-cancer drugs, administered orally and directly into his bloodstream. The chemotherapy treatment lasted eight days. Simultaneously he received medications to keep him alive. Extreme weakness and nausea accompanied the chemotherapy.

"I understand better the whole idea of death and resurrection," the priest said. "I'd go to sleep not knowing if I'd be alive the next day."

He describes the experience with an image, saying it was as though he were walking along a seashore and death extended a skeletal hand to him "tempting me to take his hand. I never took his hand. I chose to live. The temptation was not to choose life. It was a real conversion point."

Priests have an advantage, Father Bayer said, because they face the reality of death more often than ordinary people. "We bury people, young children. We visit people in the hospital. But even with that, we can deny death. We drive home from the hospital, from the cemetery."

He describes the experience as "extremely spiritual. I found a lot of personal growth. I'm letting go of nonsense -- of hurts, wounds, anger. Little things don't bug me so much."

"To go from being a pastor, an educated man who was in control" to total dependence on others and the ignominy of loss of bodily control required "a letting go and saying okay to God," Father Bayer said.

On the eighth day, "day zero" as the Emory oncologists call it, Father Bayer received what resembled a pint of blood through an injection in his hip. The transplanted marrow would find its way into the core of his bones and begin to replenish his blood. He continued to receive supplemental blood products and other fluids, but he believes that was the first day of the rest of his life. Although the doctors are cautious, he recalls one saying, "You know, you're going to live to be an old priest."

There was a time when "my sister and I were fighting," the priest joked. He developed a fever, the sign of host-donor complications. Father Bayer credits Emory's expert care for staving off rejection. He still is highly vulnerable to infection, particularly pneumonia, and children's diseases. He wears a mask when going out of the rectory and does not offer Mass in public.

During his hospital stay Father Bayer continued to pray the Divine Office and offer Mass for the people of his parish except when extreme weakness made that impossible. Then his prayer became "simply recognizing my emptiness before God."

It was the prayers of others that lifted his spirits. "People who knew me and didn't know me, people who loaned me their faith." He was reminded of Jesus' promise to those who leave all to follow Him that "they will receive 100 times more brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers."

A friend in a rented red convertible took him home from the hospital. "It was a bright, sunny October day. The trees were starting to change. The red of that convertible seemed redder than any red I had ever seen. I was sensitive to the privilege of seeing things along the road. Before I had just been trying to get someplace."

The date was October 15, the anniversary of Archbishop Thomas Donnellan's death. "To me, he was right there," Father Bayer said. "He had ordained me. I had the highest regard for that man and I deeply loved him." In Father Bayer's absence, Father John DeVore, MSFS, parochial vicar at St. Patrick's, took care of parish affairs.

The priest is not out of the woods yet, although there is "growing evidence we have a complete cure," he said. He returns to Emory twice a week for blood tests and is considered at high risk of getting pneumonia until 60 days have elapsed. He must avoid crowds for six months and will have yearly bone marrow tests the rest of his life.

Although Father Bayer will not be able to offer Mass in the church sanctuary for six months, he says Mass daily in the rectory. He is beginning to meet with parish leaders to discuss parish plans. He misses contact with his people and stands at a distance outside on Sundays waving to them. Wearing a mask and gloves, he tosses a ball to his dog Roxanne and makes guarded trips to the post office. Although he speaks Spanish well enough to offer Mass in the language, he hopes to study Spanish during his imposed convalescence to improve his conversational ability.

At times he tugs at the restriction imposed by the six-month isolation., calling it the "black hole" into which his ministry has fallen and asks God "why?"

"I cannot be at Mass with my people and I miss them. I tell myself, that's what God wants from you right now. But for six months to drop out of the parish..."

"God's answer is there is no black hole. Not for one second am I beyond the presence of God," he asserts.

Father Bayer talks about his experience in liturgical terms, saying his time now is like the days after the Resurrection when the apostles had to return to their daily routine and reflect on everything that had happened. "What did this experience mean for me?" he asks himself. "How will it affect the rest of my life?"

"The first time I preach at the Easter Vigil," he asserted, "I'll speak with a better understanding of the whole idea of death and resurrection. I understand more now that one alone is God and He is not us. All of life is a sheer gift. We cannot claim the next breath in our lungs as our own."