It’s the week before St. Pius X and the rest of the high schools in the state begin fall sports practice and the lead-up to the start of classes.
Jim Lehn is casually dressed, working in his office.
The president of St. Pius, Lehn runs the only Catholic high school in the county. Looking at him, you’d think Lehn, 55, was the picture of health. His eyes are bright and he seems full of energy as he talks about becoming a grandfather for the second time. Violet Anne Lehn was born in St. Clair on Aug. 8 to his oldest son, James, 24, and his wife, Carlee. Both are 2018 St. Pius graduates and live in Hillsboro. Violet has an older sister, Eloise, 11 months old.
“Irish Catholic twins,” Lehn joked.
Lehn and his wife, Kelly, celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary last month and have five sons, ranging in age from 12 to 24. In order, from the eldest, are James, Jonathan, 22, Joseph, 20, Justin, 17, and Joshua. All but Justin and Joshua are St. Pius graduates. Justin is a senior and star running back and linebacker on the football team.
Beneath all the familial joy, Lehn is waging the fight of his life.
His abdomen and chest bear scars from the many tubes and hoses that were his lifeline of treatment while suffering from pancreatic cancer. He’s cancer-free now and has been home for months, but it’s been less than a year since he received the life-changing diagnosis.
When he got the bad news last October, Lehn knew the math was grim. Pancreatic cancer is one of the most deadly, but its survival rate is climbing. In January 2023, the American Cancer Society boosted the five-year survival rate to 12 percent.
“It’s a heavy weight,” Jim said. “I said to my doctor, ‘You’ve got to give me some good news.’ And he told me he wasn’t going to give me a stage because they’d come so far in the last five years with treating pancreatic cancer.”
When the first symptoms set in last fall, Lehn attributed them to his age and busy life. He said he was helping James and Carlee move into their new house when he started feeling run down.
“I thought, ‘I’m just getting older, it’s what happens,’” he said. “We moved them in and the next morning, I noticed my urine was dark amber. I thought I was dehydrated. No big deal. That week, I drank water. We had a lot going on at school and I noticed I was tired. I’ve been the same weight since 1991, give a pound or two. Again, it was only a week.”
But a week later, Kelly, a registered nurse, convinced Jim to see a doctor. After Lehn gave a urine sample, he was immediately told to get bloodwork done. A high count of bile was detected and the blood testing indicated inflammation in his liver.
“The whole time my energy level’s still going down.”
An MRI and more tests determined there was a tumor in his pancreas blocking a bile duct, forcing the bile to back up in Lehn’s abdomen.
“Your hands and feet itch,” he said. “You start getting jaundice.”
By the end of October, the jaundice was settling in. He was still working and went to see Dr. Edwardo Verzola, a gastroenterologist at Mercy Hospital in Festus and a St. Pius graduate. Lehn called meeting him Miracle No. 1.
“He told me, ‘Jim, we’re going to plan for the worst, and hope for the best.’ I never forgot those words.”
Doctors placed a stent in the bile duct to open it and did a biopsy. The Lehns held a family meeting.
“When I came home from the biopsy, I shared it with everyone,” he said. “I told them, ‘It’s cancer.’ My youngest said, ‘What does that mean?’ Justin asked, ‘Is it going to mean chemo?’ And I said, ‘Probably surgery, too.’”
The family immediately pitched in while Jim went through chemotherapy. A veteran of the Air Force, he loved riding Motocross and had helped build James’ home from the ground up.
“It was tough because he wasn’t able to do a lot of the things he used to,” Justin said. “I had to pick up where he left off and fill in for what he couldn’t do. The family all helped around the house – cleaning, mowing, maintenance. It was sad seeing him getting worse.
“(But) I learned that God can work miracles and anything is possible. You have to keep believing and hoping for the best.”
Lehn endured nine rounds of chemo. Although he didn’t lose his hair, the toxic drugs took their toll on his weight and sapped his energy. Lehn said he’s still down 20 of the 26 pounds he lost.
“In early March I was going in for my 10th treatment and I told (Kelly) I wasn’t looking forward to this again – ‘I’m tired of it. I feel good right now, but I know I won’t be for the next week.’ We prayed a lot.
“(So) I go in and meet with the oncologist and he tells us, ‘You’re done.’ He told me the tumor shrank and pulled away from the blood vessel.”
The medical team nevertheless was worried cancer had spread somewhere else because his numbers were still high. They asked if he wanted to try radiation for five weeks, wait two months, then have surgery. He was given the weekend to decide.
“From the beginning I wanted to do chemo, shrink it, cut it out and move on,” he said. “Radiation was never part of my plan.”
On Good Friday, March 29, Lehn was on the operating table for more than seven hours as doctors performed the Whipple procedure to remove the tumor. The complex surgery involved disconnecting the stomach from the duodenum, removing more than 20 centimeters of small intestine, and cutting the tip of the pancreas where the tumor was. Then they moved the pancreas to where the stomach used to be, removed the gall bladder and reconnected his stomach to a different part of the intestine.
After the surgery, Lehn was a human Christmas tree of medical devices. By the next morning, the doctors said he was going to get out of bed and walk farther every day until he got well enough to go home, which he did five days later.
But his ordeal wasn’t over. He started running a fever from an infection; post-operative leakage was the culprit. The abscess was drained and Lehn was told it would take two to four weeks to heal. By the next day, the doctors were encouraged enough by the results to discharge him.
He beat the odds, more than once, thanks to his family’s support and, he believes, one other reason.
“I absolutely believe it has a lot to do with faith.”
There’s so much more life to live for Lehn. Jonathan wants to build a house and start a family on the same property as James and Carlee. Joseph, who helped start the boys volleyball team at St. Pius, is enrolled in college. Justin wants to play football in college, but if that doesn’t happen, maintaining a 4.35 grade point average and his 28 on the ACT exam will still get him there. And Joshua likes golf and is poised to flourish as a teenager.
Lehn knows he’s been given a second chance.
“I don’t know how people can go through something like this and not be a true believer.”