On September 16, a dapperly dressed Delroy Lingo, founder of the Caribbean Gospel Music Legend Awards, was all laughter and encouragement as he greeted guests and awardees. However, nothing in his demeanour showed that since 2019, he has been fighting a battle with stage 3 cancer, which, one year ago, morphed into stage 4.
The radio disc jock, promoter, artiste manager, and minister of the gospel shared his extraordinary journey with Freedom Come Rain.
“In 2019, when I went to do my physical, they asked me if I had ever done a colonoscopy, and I told him no. Given the opportunity, almost every year I just took the paper work and never did it,” he shared in the lead up to his discovery of the disease.
After doing the colonoscopy, the doctor told him he saw something that he didn’t like. However, Lingo brushed it aside, telling him that everything would be ok as he was hoping for the best.
A few days later, while heading to the studio to work on a project, he said that as he arrived, his phone rang with the doctor greeting him with the news that he had stage three cancer.
“The minute he said that, I heard ‘cancer is not a death sentence’, I heard that loud and clear. So right there, I got some comfort. I went into the studio and told the engineer, because he is a Christian, and we started praying, and I literally felt as if angels came into the studio. The power of God came down, and so I have not worried about it,” he shared.
Lingo said that since getting the news, he has not lost any sleep over it, as he had great faith in God that everything would be alright.
The doctors started discussing surgery and the need to set a date. It was a few days from the fourth of July, when his church normally hosted a big cookout.
Lingo said he told the doctor that it could be after, but not before.
On July 5, he was in the hospital getting the surgery done. It was successful, as the doctors informed him they had gotten everything.
The road to recovery was arduous and painful; it involved numerous tests, wearing an ostomy tube, and succumbing to doctor’s pressure to undergo chemotherapy.
“I refused to do chemo as I was thinking, ‘Why am I putting something in my body that is going to attack all my good cells,” he stated.
Upon his refusal, the doctor told him the likelihood that the cancer would reappear in two or three years, but in his case, there was an 80 percent chance it would.
“I said okay if I have 80%; with my faith, that should be more than enough, so I refused the chemo,” he noted.
Life went back to normal for Lingo until the following year and a half, when he went back to do another physical. He remembers being in the studio just wrapping up a song with the words, “Though I walk through the shadow of death.” He said that the minute he completed the song, his phone rang.
The doctor was on the line with the news that the cancer had returned and that he had to do another surgery.
Lingo said he got resistant and started questioning if he had to do surgery every year. It was then that he started exploring alternative means instead of surgery. He sought other medical opinions but ended up with the same opinion that surgery was the best route.
Finally, he accepted the option of radiation and chemo tablets.
Things got worse for Lingo when his colon passage was completely blocked, and he had to undergo surgery to clear the passage.
The surgery was slated for early in the morning, but as a result of the volume of cases for the day, it was three hours late.
He was scheduled to remove the blockage as well as the cancer, but the doctor told him they could only clear the blockage with the other part scheduled for later.
“When they removed the blockage, he said he saw something inside that didn’t look too good. I did the biopsy, and then came the news that I now had stage 4 cancer,” he related.
“I said, ‘What do you expect me to do with this information?’ Throughout my whole process, I have never sat down and said ‘I have cancer’ and started to worry. Sometimes I don’t even remember if people don’t remind me,” he recalled.
Lingo said it took him three weeks before he informed his wife that the cancer was back. He told her during their devotion. He said her reaction was normal, as she had learned by this to gauge her reaction to how he handled it.
Having held the news from his family at the time of the first diagnosis, he eventually opened up to them about the new diagnosis.
They were upset that he hid it from them, but for Lingo, he didn’t want to be pressured about his choices and wanted to maintain his peace of mind.
“My mind was on wellness. I wasn’t worried about anything. I realised that many people who die, cancer did not kill them, [they] are worried. They give up hope; they give up on life. Most people, when they hear stage four, that’s where it stops. I wasn’t worried about it; the doctors say they couldn’t do a surgery, and if they did, it might spread and cover the whole intestine. I told them no more surgery, no more chemos. I told them I have experienced surgery and chemotherapy, and the only thing left is divine healing, and that’s next,” he shared.
Prayer went up around the clock for Lingo, and he said that within that process, he started to see his life differently.
Admitting that healing was not a magical moment, he said it was a process he had to go through, so he started seeing his body as God’s temple, so he had to make it fit for him to dwell in.
“I conditioned my mind. I had to develop a spiritual relationship with God to the point where I haven’t watched television in five months. I stopped listening to certain things. I said, God, I am going to make sure that my temple is somewhere you can live. I am going to do everything that I can to keep it clean. When I went to see the doctor to talk to him, I told him I was not doing any chemo,” he revealed.
Lingo said he told the doctor he had an award show to do in Jamaica, and when he returned, he was going on a cruise with his wife. He did concede to doing a cat scan when he got back.
Following the awards show, he was back in the US and subjected to the cat scan.
Three weeks later, he was back at the hospital to do a physical, and the nurse greeted him with the good news that there was no sign of cancer in his body.
Lingo said his doctor was puzzled and kept saying that in all his career he had never seen anything like that. He searched for a missing link, which Lingo was happy to supply.
“I told him I am a man of faith, and I believed in God and in healing. He told me that he is a man of science. So now that he sees a cat scan, he is seeing nothing on it.
He said I knew what I saw, and that could not disappear. I said, it is God’s healing,” Lingo said.
He still needed more proof; so he was subjected to 58 blood tests, all showing that his body was cancer-free!
Lingo is now writing his book about his miraculous healing, titled ‘Cancer Is Not A Death Sentence’.
He said he wants others to know that, whether it is cancer or anything else, God is still in the miracle-working business.