After surviving a brutal childhood and cancer, Twin Lake man finds a new, purposeful, life

GRENANHEA_SU_C_^_SUNIQREBORN: Jack Grenan is a survivor of colon cancer and was in a medically induced coma for three months. He works a junior varsity basketball coach at Holton.
DALTON TWP. -- The day Jack Grenan was diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer, he thanked God it wasn't something worse.

"I'm probably the only guy in America who thought: Thank you, God. I am so blessed. I don't have Lou Gehrig's disease ... or something really awful," Grenan says. "I've got cancer, that's all."

Cancer. That's all.

In Grenan's life, cancer was just one more obstacle to overcome, one more detour in a journey that's had as many downturns as it's had victories.

It was one more harsh reality to turn into a blessing, one man's Easter story of constant rebirth and renewal.

"Only if you've lived my life can you believe it," Grenan says.

As a child, Grenan was abused by a father tormented by alcoholism and mental illness. Grenan was bullied, beaten both at home and in the streets of inner-city Detroit where he grew up. It was nothing to discover dead bodies in his front yard, he says; nothing to stumble over shooting and stabbing victims on his family's porch. That's how violent his existence was. Several times, he says, he was bludgeoned, stabbed and left for dead by gang members who ruled the neighborhood.

"It was survival every day," he says.

Now 57, Grenan lives in Twin Lake with his wife, Nancy, and their 15-year-old daughter, Katie. A former teacher and high school principal, Grenan is no longer able to work full-time, sidelined by complications from his cancer. But he is not idle. He volunteers as a coach for Holton High School's basketball team. He works with young people who have been abused.

GRENANGUY_SU_C_^_SUNIQCommunicating: Jack Grenan, at top and at right above, talks to students, from left, Jeremiah Sergent, Mike Ellis and Ben Anderson at Holton High School on Wednesday.
"I have a gift," he says. "They tell me things they've never told anyone else because I understand. I've been there."

But his greatest gift -- to others -- is offering to counsel cancer patients struggling with their own diagnoses.

As inspiration, he tells his own story.

"Only God could take someone's misery and turn it into something good," he says.

And so, he starts with the day he died.

On March 26, 2006, Grenan suffered massive heart, lung and kidney failure. Just a week earlier, he'd undergone successful surgery to remove a portion of his colon. He was sent home, eager to begin what he knew would be a long and arduous recovery, followed by prolonged chemotherapy, surgeries and other treatment. But within days, he was rushed back to the hospital with a temperature of 106 degrees. He'd developed peritonitis -- an inflammation of a membrane in the abdominal cavity, a condition that is often fatal -- and was in septic shock.

While family and friends gathered outside his hospital room, praying, singing, supporting one another, Grenan struggled to stay alive.

"It got worse and worse and worse," he says.

At its worst, Grenan says he experienced nothing short of a miracle: an out-of-body experience, commonly known as "near death" or "life after death."

During it, Grenan says he had the chance to go to heaven -- or to stay behind.

"I chose to come back to my family," he says, simply.

Like many who report going through near-death experiences, Grenan remembers floating above his hospital bed, observing what was going on. In conversation, he says "an angel" spoke to him. In a blog he's written about the experience, he calls the messenger a "spirit."

"The spirit showed me a picture of a road with a yellow/orange dotted line down the middle," he writes in his blog.

On one side of the road, there was a playground filled with young children, playing and laughing. Grenan remembers the colors were "brighter than anything I had ever seen."

"The voice said to me: You can join them now if you choose," Grenan says.

On the other side of the divided road, he saw himself in the hospital bed, lying there lifeless, hooked up to a breathing machine.

"The voice then said: Or you can return and take care of your family," he says, pausing before finishing the message. "But you will suffer."

Grenan had heard the voice before, and he knew its power. Five months before being diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer in 2006, he was in Sunday morning services at Church of the Dunes United Methodist Church in Grand Haven, where he and his family lived at the time.

"I heard this voice say: Someone in your family is going to be sick," Grenan says.

The Grenans have a blended family of five children, the oldest now 35 and Katie, who is the youngest. Grenan says he pictured each child, and couldn't bear the thought of them suffering.

"I prayed: Let it be me," Grenan says, "and my prayers were answered."

During his near-death experience, Grenan says he listened to the voice that had forecast his future. He describes everything happening in "slow motion." He thought of his wife and his young daughter and knew their lives would not be the same without him.

"I was then carried on a beam of sunlight back into my chest where with a boom! I re-entered my own body," he says.

As he speaks, he thumps himself on the chest to emphasize the point. It was at that moment, he believes his heart started pounding again. He was back on this side of the road.

But he couldn't tell anyone about it because he was in a medically induced coma at Mercy Health Partners' Sherman Campus for three months.

"I think a lot of people were pretty surprised that he pulled through. He'd been given up for dead," says his pastor, the Rev. Dan Duncan, of Grand Haven.

From the minute Grenan was coherent, freed from the coma, he began to tell his story of choosing home over heaven to anyone who'd listen, even strangers.

"I thought I'd be on Oprah or the 700 Club," he says. "Who wouldn't want to hear about a guy floating above his hospital bed?"

For awhile, Nancy Grenan says she even asked her husband to stop talking about it. The memories were too painful still for her. She'd witnessed just how close to death he really was.

"People often don't wear these kinds of stories on their sleeves like Jack does," Duncan says. "They'll report how (near-death experiences) change their outlooks. I think it takes awhile to sink in."

While he was in the coma, doctors couldn't start chemotherapy to treat his colon cancer, which they discovered was also in his lymph nodes. As soon as he was well enough, he began seven months of chemotherapy and endured multiple surgeries.

He was never alone during the days he was in treatment, he was always listening, always talking to other patients.

"I always wondered if I was diagnosed with cancer, if I'd go through chemotherapy," says Mary Worth of Spring Lake, who is Nancy Grenan's best friend and office partner at Baker College where they both teach.

"Because of Jack, I'm not afraid," she says.

That's because he learned to find the blessings, even in the toughest situations, he says. His story starts in inner-city Detroit, growing up on Ohio Street in a predominantly Irish-Catholic neighborhood, the oldest and only son in a large family. His first -- and most enduring -- memories are being beaten by his father, who carried on a family legacy of "education by his fists."

Grenan's mother stepped in on occasion to protect her son from the abuse, imploring her husband not to hit the boy in his head. But she couldn't stop the violence.

"I thought God was against me," Grenan says.

By the time he was in high school in the late-1960s, the Grenans were one of the few white families left in the neighborhood. But he was a good student, and after graduation, he earned his bachelor's degree from Michigan State University. He went on to Wayne State University for a master's degree in education, then later received postgraduate degrees from two online programs in counseling and hypnotherapy.

That's why he didn't fear the diagnosis when the doctors told him he had six months to live, he says.

He's survived more than cancer. He's conquered some of life's worst foes, and triumphed over them. He had the choice of going to heaven, or coming back to life.

"I'm not a hero," Grenan says. "I'm very blessed. Thank you, God, only you could do this."