My Friend David Pataconi, In His Own Words (Part One)

The next two blogs are dedicated to a friend of mine who passed away two days ago. On his Facebook profile, David described himself this way:

“Jesus Freak | Husband | Dad | Producer | Engineer | Musician | Vocalist [Fighting stage 4 cancer]”

First, you must understand, David was the KING of “dad jokes,” and the cheesier the better. Here’s just one of the many he posted on Facebook:

Yup, that’s David. He had such a loving and caring way about him; you couldn’t help but be drawn to it. One of the most incredible signs of his bright and shining spirit was the fact that many of us felt like we were his best friend. What I also found fascinating about him are the short responses I received when I’d ask him how he’s doing. For example:

“Not bad, haven’t been sleeping much. Pain has been worse lately, but God is still good! How’re you doing, brother?”

I mean, the man was literally dying of cancer, yet never kept the light on himself.

Well, I could talk about David all day, but I’d rather let him speak for himself. I just finished writing a book about surviving life’s heaviest trials, which I’m hoping gets published someday. At one point I’d considered adding a few testimonies to it. The Lord changed my mind about that, but thankfully, David had already written a summarized version of his story, which he sent me by email.

Here is part one of David’s story, in his own words:

Hello, my name is David Pataconi. I was raised in a Christian home. My parents divorced when I was about four, and I was raised in church. I gave my life to Jesus when I was six years old, or at least I thought I did. I prayed the salvation prayer, and believed it, but for about ten years I didn’t live that out.

For a long time I was definitely not walking with God, especially in high school. I was doing my own thing, and would just tell people I’m a Christian, just “not the best of Christians”. I ended up in some trouble, and went to juvenile prison when I was 16. The day the prison door closed, I was praying, and I think Holy Spirit was praying through me. I told God I had realized by then, all I was capable of without Him was hurting others and myself. I also told the Lord I didn’t want out of juvie until He fixed me.

So I thought I’d be there for maybe two weeks, but when my case came up, I got one of the strictest judges in the local system. A lot of kids inside had told me, “Get any judge but that one!” but that’s the one I got.

I was in there for 14 months; I worked hard and did everything they asked me to do. I received forgiveness from everyone I hurt, directly and indirectly. I was able to forgive myself, but most importantly, God had forgiven me. I couldn’t get enough of Jesus! I was totally surrendered to God, and was willing to do not only whatever He asked of me, but whatever He needed to do to change me.

Before I got arrested, I was suicidal. Every day I was hopeless. People would ask, “What are you gonna do after high school?”

I would reply, “I don’t even know if I’ll live till tomorrow…” That was my mindset before I went to juvie.

But while I was in, I fully surrendered my life to God.

I had done all the hard work; all those activities and exercises they required of me, to help shape me into a better person. There were so many people around the world praying for me, interacting with me, encouraging me, and sending me Bible verses. By the end of it, I was not the same person who went in; I had completely changed. During my time there I’d seen kids released and then come back, sometimes multiple times. My mindset was I never wanted to come back, but I also didn’t want to be the same person. It honestly broke my heart, watching so many come and go, in and out of “the system,” when things weren’t changing. I just I wanted them to have what I had, which was Christ.

And so at the end of my sentence, before I was released, the guards gave me an open invitation to come back. They said they didn’t know what I had done, or how I’d done it, but they felt I was the “poster child” for what they were trying to do in the Department of Juvenile Corrections. So they asked me to come back and share with the other kids whatever it was I’d done.

I simply told them I surrendered my life to Jesus, and did not want to come back.

Fast forward to my journey with cancer. In March 2024, I began having stomach pains that came and went, but eventually got bad enough I went to urgent care. Doctors ran some tests, and told me, “You need to go to the emergency room, STAT. Don’t stop and get food or anything. Don’t mess around with this. You need to go now.”

So I drove myself over to the hospital, and was seen by doctors and nurses relatively quickly. They had done some scans, and all they could determine was that my bowels were inflamed. They weren’t sure if it was inflammatory bowel disease or appendicitis. They couldn’t even see my appendix, as “everything is too enflamed.”

While they were trying to figure out what was going on, I was admitted to the hospital for four days. They put me on antibiotics for a week and sent me home. I was told this should help, but if it gets worse, come back ASAP. About a week later, I woke up in the middle of the night with extreme pain, and ended up going back to the hospital. This time they admitted me for nine days. The first thing they did after treating my pain was have me drink some stuff to “empty things out,” to put it a nice way.

The next morning, they were going to do a colonoscopy, but they ended up doing emergency surgery instead. They opened me up, not knowing what they’re going to find, but apparently things were pretty damaged, due to my appendix bursting and spewing sticky goo all over. My surgeon told me afterward it was like a bomb went off inside my body. There was a lot of tissue damage, and they took out the right half of my colon, along with my appendix. They stitched up the inner part of what had been opened in my abdomen, but left the top layer open because the entire surgery site could have been prone to infection.

Afterward, they put a wound vac on me, which is basically like a piece of foam they put in the wound, and then they put plastic over it, creating a vacuum seal. I was attached to a pump for quite a while. They’d have to change the bandage out (foam, plastic, etc.) every couple of days, and it was really, really painful. When they would ask me how my pain was on a scale from one to ten, I’d tell them, “Level 10 or more” every time.

From the beginning of all this, my prayer to God was, (1.) “Help me not to complain. (2.) Help me to suffer well. (3.) Please use this to help and encourage other people, and (4.) Use this to the fullest extent of Your ability.”

I can say He’s answered all those prayers, and continues to answer them every day!

They eventually were going to sew me back up to seal the wound. When the time came, however, I saw a different doctor, who said, “You are probably wondering why I’m here.” I answered, “Yeah!” and he responded, “There’s no easy way to say this, but in looking at what we removed from you, we found a tumor right next to where your appendix was. Because your appendix burst, those tumor cells could have travelled anywhere in your body.”

I was diagnosed with stage three colon cancer: specifically, “Mucinous Adenocarcinoma”. It’s basically an extremely rare form of cancer that only affects about 1% of all those diagnosed. In fact, it’s so rare that most doctors only see it maybe once or twice their entire career. Come to find out, the type of cancer and the genetic mutation I’m diagnosed with together only affects 1 in 30 million people.

But this is the path God has chosen for me, and I am eternally grateful.

TO BE CONTINUED…