Help Innocent Beat Cancer

Update:

9/27/2023

To all who have supported us financially, with prayer, and with encouragement --

I am overwhelmed by the generosity of each of you!

I’m fighting to beat this cancer because I want to keep my wife and eight children safe in this crazy world. I want to be here to show my sons how to grow up to be men of integrity and faith. I want to show my daughter how much I love her. I want to see my children start their own families; I want to hold my grandchildren.

Zenovia said a lot about me in her post, but nothing about herself. She has blessed my life beyond words. When we got married in 2002, she made the decision to stay home and raise and educate our children. This came with a price, however, as she sacrificed nursing school in order to support my journey to PA school at Stanford. In fact, we took some of the same courses and her grades were always better than mine! Although I am sick with metastatic cancer, it pales in comparison to the burden she faces of having to get an entry level job as a widow with eight children to feed. I also don’t want her to have to be the Mom and Dad for our kids. I don’t want her to go through the grief of having to bury her husband. It was hard enough to bury our baby son Iakovos. It was so hard, but then we had each other and didn’t have to face the loss alone.

She really is the special one in the relationship who deserves everything.

She showed me how to experience happiness.

She gave me this amazing family.

Since the night when I found out I have a metastatic cancer, I have been fighting. I was ready to take whatever chemotherapy, surgery, or radiation my doctors wanted to give me. But all they have is symptom relief. So, I fought to create an income stream for my family by building our garage into apartments they could rent out. I did this with joy so I could leave them with something. But this project is far from complete. After 6 months of being unable to work and putting everything I had and everything our community gave us into these buildings we ran out of money and energy.

AND THEN YOU GAVE US EVERYTHING!!!

You are all helping a lot and it means so much to us.

My wife has been in tears many times in the last week, seeing the donations come in. It has given us a huge boost. Since church on Sunday my energy level has been higher than it has been since December. I feel a noticeable difference. My clarity of thought is improved. Before the last few days I could not talk for any length of time due to weakness, and now I can. I feel so much stress dissipating; I am so grateful to each of you for helping us face the greatest challenge of our lives.

I am eating healthy food, with green juices and smoothies, and taking the medicine from the hospital in Mexico, but don't have much of the equipment for their treatment. The money raised so far is a MIRACULOUS start toward getting some of this equipment and helping to pay the medical bills and family expenses, not to mention the credit card debt accrued just for groceries and overhead. We are already a quarter of the way to the minimum of what it will take to do everything in our power to put the cancer in remission.

No matter how this goes, I want to show my daughter and sons that when cancer came I gave the fight everything I had. I fought hard. I fought for my wife and children. I leave you with this final quote which has helped me throughout the years of many struggles: LOVE THE FIGHT!

Thank you all for fighting with me :)

Ricardo (Innocent) Flippen

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9/23/2023

Hello, my name is Zenovia.

A few months ago, my husband was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic neuroendocrine cancer. He is only 47. I want to tell you about this man I love.

As a child, Innocent was moved around in the foster care system. For a brief time, he was blessed to live with his Aunt Jennifer and Uncle Travis, who cared for him with tenderness and Christian love. As a result, Innocent began to trust that God would somehow deliver him from the sorrows he continued to endure throughout his childhood. Many difficult years later, the healing began.

When he was 24, Innocent found out about the Orthodox faith and came to St. Lawrence Church in Felton to become a catechumen. He was in the front of the church having prayers said over him when I noticed him for the first time. I saw a strong young man with a sincere face that reflected an earnest love for God, and in that moment, I knew he was the one I had been waiting for. I leaned over to my mom and whispered, “That is the man I am going to marry.” Eleven weeks later, that is exactly what happened. Since then, we have been blessed to have nine children together: Sergius, Savva, Fevronia, Iakovos, Maximus, Silouan, Menas, Nikiforos, and Ephraim. Our son Iakovos was a twin; he passed away three hours after he was born.

Innocent has always been so dedicated to giving me and the kids all the love, attention, and time he can, even through the rigors of PA school and while working multiple jobs. He has taken us camping and fishing, played nightly soccer with the kids, and read to the family in the evenings. We have always been his greatest source of joy.

He is a talented and highly respected physician assistant in our small rural community, putting his heart into helping his patients along their path to healing. Quite simply, he is a gift to all who know him.

In 2018, my husband began to suffer from bowel obstructions. He had recently graduated from PA school, and was working two jobs in order to buy our family a home and get us on our feet. When he began seeing doctors for this problem, they could not explain what was happening to him. By the end of 2022, the obstructions were so common that he could eat very little and had almost no energy. He would come home for lunch and fall into a deep sleep, then drink coffee in order to return to the clinic and finish out the day. His doctor ordered a CT scan and we waited patiently for the results.

A few days later, we were attending the Annunciation service, where we remember the Archangel Gabriel coming to the Virgin Mary with news that Christ would come to save us. I remember the candles shimmering in the darkness and the beautiful heavenly singing. My husband’s phone vibrated and when he saw it was his doctor calling, he stepped outside. After taking the call he came up to me with a stunned expression on his face, saying, “I have cancer.” It was so shocking. I struggled to hold back tears, and the service became a blur to me. But through the sorrow there was this bright feeling of hope and joy, that we were in God’s hands, and that everything would be okay.

A week later, on the feast of St. Innocent (his patron saint), he underwent surgery to remove the primary intestinal tumor and to biopsy his liver. At that time Innocent was referred to one of the best oncologists in neuroendocrine cancer, who informed him that the cancer was stage 4, terminal, and had metastasized from his small intestine to his lymph nodes, stomach, pelvis, and liver. The oncologist told him that no one has ever been cured of this rare type of cancer at such a late stage with radiation or chemotherapy. The prognosis ranges from several months to several years. Innocent was advised to file for disability and get his affairs in order.

With his deteriorating condition and overall weakness, nausea and fatigue, he had to stop working as a PA. For a time, we accepted what the oncologist told us. Innocent dedicated what he thought would be the last active months of his life to fixing our house and converting a garage into apartments so that we could have rental income to pay the mortgage and other living expenses. But then, miraculously, a family we had never met offered to pay the expenses for Innocent to go to Hope for Cancer in Mexico, a treatment center that has had success with terminal cancers. After three weeks of non-toxic cancer treatments, two of the three tumors that were being tracked had decreased in size. I also noticed improvement with how my husband looked and felt, although weakness continued to be a struggle.

Here we are at Hope for Cancer in Mexico, July 2023

Upon returning from Mexico, however, Innocent did not have all the medicine he needed, the building projects became more stressful, and we could no longer pay our bills. Innocent began to decline, struggling with extreme fatigue, weakness, brain fog, and nausea. It has become clear to both of us that we need to dedicate ourselves entirely to curing his cancer at home with the treatments we know to be helpful, while also providing a stress-free environment to allow his immune system to fight the cancer.

Our extended family and Christian neighbors, and even his patients, have been so generous in supporting us during these months. But because we are no longer able to pay for cancer treatment or our regular bills, I am reaching out now for additional support. No amount is too small. With a combined effort, even $5 or $10 can go a long way to help care for my husband and our family. If you are unable to contribute, I hope you will consider sharing his story with others.

We are sustained by God and by the prayers and support of so many people. Our family keeps all those who have helped us in our daily prayers. Our situation would be far worse were it not for people willing to carry our burden with us. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts, and God bless you!

With hope in Christ,

Zenovia and Innocent