Retired Pastor With Cancer: I'm Alive Because of God and Science

After battling cancer for 20 years, a retired pastor is in remission for five years now, which he said is a result of his faith in both God and science.

Scott Erdman, 57, said his affliction started in 1981 when he was diagnosed with melanoma while he was in school studying to become a pastor, according to Fox News.

When he was 24 years old, he felt a small lump in his armpit. His doctors eventually removed a tumor and 24 lymph nodes.

He had a leave from his studies at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, for nine months to focus on his illness.

"I've always been an individual that's really wanted the most for what I could give, and so when this happened ... God really took the issue of what was going to happen with my life, and I didn't ever really take it back," Erdman said.

Erdman juggled school and working as a youth pastor at Bel Air Presbyterian Church.

In 1991, he said he began getting headaches. An M.R.I. scan showed that he had three brain tumors.

He met Dr. Keith Black at the emergency room of the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center. The doctor, Fox News said, used stereotactic radiation therapy on Erdman to specifically target the areas in his body with tumors with X-ray.

"I didn't expect removing these three tumors surgically would cure him of his melanoma. I did believe it would give him a year or two before new [ones developed]," Black said.

Although the surgery was a success, Erdman started getting seizures. He took anti-seizure medicine but he said it didn't help him. "It gets a little exhausting, but it's like you don't have an option – I can pack it in or I can go for it. I wasn't going to pack it in," Erdman said.

Another brain tumor appeared two years after his surgery and doctors once again removed it.

Erdman said his cancer returned in 1994 and as consequence, his left kidney, spleen, part of his pancreas and some lymph nodes were removed.

In 2008, Black found two lesions, which were removed using Gamma Knife radiosurgery.

Erdman has been in remission since 2010. Black said Erdman is one of the few cancer patients who have so far survived one of the world's most fatal diseases.

"We have a number of patients like him. Luckily that number is beginning to increase over time as we become more intelligent about the way that we treat these tumors," he said.

Erdman said he is alive because of God. "I can tell you, the reason I'm alive is because of God, no question in my mind," he said.

At the same time, he expressed gratitude for what his doctors have done. "I've got the greatest neurosurgeon the world has to offer, and I'm grateful because he's been able to destroy tumors that others might not have been able to ... Doctors don't think I should be here today," he said.

Last June, Erdman retired from being a pastor. "It made me look at myself from a whole different perspective, and I think it changed [me] totally ... having gone through it, I recognize that I'm a different person today than I would have been having not gone through it," he said. "I don't know what God has for me, so I'm just trusting I'll go with the flow and, somewhere down the line, he'll use me as he wants to use me."