Johan Jan

Days after his first brain surgery, Johan stood up and walked — less than five hours after the operation. The doctor said that in twenty-three years she had never seen anything like it. The vision they'd been told would never improve came back almost entirely.

"We prayed to God to lead us to the surgeon He had chosen for Johan, and we truly believe He guided us to the right one."

Then, on Easter Sunday, they found a lump in his left arm.

Irene had been reading about the saints people turn to for cancer — Peregrine, Charbel, Jude, Padre Pio, Mother Mary. Ci Yanli had already given oil of Saint Charbel; Ci Ratna brought Saint Peregrine at the hospital. Then her parents arrived carrying three bottles they had chosen without knowing any of it: Saint Jude, Padre Pio, and Mother Mary.

"We have the complete set now — ready to go for the battle!"

Five days of radiation, beginning April 20. Hands secured, mask fastened, required to lie completely still. On the worst day he said it felt like his brain was about to explode. He still didn't move.

On the second day, fitted into the mask and unable to lift a hand, the technician put on music. It was Holy Forever. He couldn't move to wipe his tears.

On the fifth day he rang the bell. Then he wrote:

"To my lovely wife Irene. I truly could not have gone through this without you. You have gone above and beyond in every way, even when I wasn't at my best. Your love and strength carry me every single day."

"I truly believe that everything will be beautiful in His time."

Three days later, on April 28, he turned 48. He spent his birthday thanking everyone else.

May brought a second brain surgery. The day before, Fr. Matthew came from their parish, anointed Johan, and heard their confessions. Two days after the operation, his smile lines came back.

Then weeks of stomach pain no one could explain. One afternoon, watching Mass online together, they talked honestly about suffering — does God even care? Someone knocked. The palliative doctor, come for his pain. Then the gastroenterologist they'd been told they couldn't see. Then a nurse with a transfusion they hadn't qualified for.

"As for Johan, you know him. He remains in good spirits and hopeful in the Lord."

At a transfusion appointment: if the recheck didn't improve, back to the ER that day. Irene asked Mother Mary for help. Johan simply started praying the rosary — she could see his fingers counting. The nurse returned; the numbers had come down.

"Why did we need to worry? If something like that happens, we just pray. That's all you need to do."

June 13 — Ollie's baptism, on the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. A friend pressed a pearl rosary into Irene's hand and said Mother Mary had told her to give it to her.

Three days later they dreaded his brain MRI so much they had considered cancelling it. Irene took the disc home herself and sent it to her cousin, a radiologist. Three of the five brain lesions had shrunk. One was gone.

She ran upstairs to tell him — and Johan broke down.

Because the day before, when he had felt most defeated, Mother Mary had told him he would hear good news on Tuesday. He had been too exhausted to believe it. He hadn't told anyone.

June 21. He was bleeding and it wouldn't stop. Fifteen liters of blood. Friends prayed in the waiting room without stopping. The doctors told Irene to prepare for the worst; one of them used the word dying.

And then, heavily sedated and not supposed to be able to, Johan opened his eyes, took a pad, and wrote:

"Kita gedor pintu surga." Let's knock on the gates of heaven.

The bleeding stopped. His kidneys came back. The breathing tube came out. Dr. Alice Fan called it what it was: a miracle.

A nurse named Courtney stopped Irene mid-sentence: "Wait — are you the guy from Northeast ICU? None of us thought you were going to make it. Everyone kept saying, 'He's so young.' …but here you are." Johan smiled at Irene: "See, yang? That's God telling us."

That Sunday, Fr. Matthew returned from a pilgrimage carrying water from Lourdes. "You can't go to Lourdes right now, so Lourdes comes to you." Johan poured it over his chest, looked at Irene, smiled as big as he could, and said: "Mother Mary."

Then the storm came back. Irene prayed frantically at his bedside, desperate. Johan stopped her.

"Don't pray like that. Surrender. Surrender to God."

One night while he lay unconscious, two friends sang his favourite worship songs beside his bed. His oxygen, dangerously low, climbed while they sang. A nurse said it was a coincidence. It never went back down.

On July 4, dialysis began, and Irene finally set down what she had been carrying alone. "Jesus, I trust in You." For the first time in weeks, she ate, and drank, and slept.

On July 13 a new attending physician took over the ICU — one Irene felt had already given up. The bleeding had returned. GI and Interventional Radiology both declined to intervene. He moved to withdraw Johan's dialysis and took the case to the hospital's ethics committee.

Fifteen committee members. A Zoom screen. Irene, with her sister-in-law beside her and her mother and brother listening by phone, presented her husband's case from memory — every procedure, every doctor's name.

Twice they asked whether Johan had told her what he wanted. She answered that they had a seven-month-old son. That Johan wanted to be a father to him. That she was fighting for what he would want.

She lost.

And then things began happening that no one could explain. The bleeding stopped on its own — twice. His hemoglobin rose without a transfusion. The dialysis machine everyone expected to fail kept running, day after day, its readings stubbornly normal.

"How do I explain a dialysis machine that everyone expected to stop, yet continues to run? I am learning that faith is not always about doing more or trying harder. Sometimes, it's about watching how God works."

One afternoon his body had gone cold and his breathing had climbed to forty. Then Ci Fanti and Mila walked back into the room, and Johan opened his eyes. Warmth returned to his hands. His breathing slowed to sixteen. The nurse manager, Jennifer, came in, saw it, and burst into tears: "Keep fighting for what you believe in. I am with you."

That evening Ci Fanti shared a video of Johan singing Heart of Worship, and remembered him telling her, "Iya ci, kita nanti sing lagi yah lagu ini" — let's sing this song again someday.

On July 21 Irene went to court herself. On July 22 the judge granted the injunction, and his care was restored.

The next day, sitting in despair beside a husband who would no longer wake for her, she watched the neurologist examine him and thought: I'm going to ask whether he still has brain activity. Before she could speak, the doctor looked up and said, "He definitely has brain activity."

"My hope has returned."