Need to Know

I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer. (I can hear you all saying, "Thanks for that, Captain Obvious!").  When it comes to myeloma, my dullness becomes even more pronounced. Many people in my situation overheat their keyboards googling information, and wear out their doctors by asking questions. For me, that just doesn't work. Almost every time I have researched, attended a conference or read the latest newsletter from Myeloma Canada, I have found myself in the dark places of this disease. The places where you learn the incredible complexity of  blood and bone marrow cancer. The places where you see the catastrophic damage both the disease and the treatments do to your body. Dark places that end in death.

You might be picturing an ostrich, bearing a striking resemblance to me, with his head firmly planted in the sand. You would not be completely wrong, but I think of it more as learning things on a "need to know" basis. The confirmation came this week of another relapse, so once again there is a "need to know." I am learning that my particular cancer can be knocked down with treatment but it has the ability to get up quickly; neither of my remissions was as long as the doctors expected. I am learning that certain drugs and treatments are being crossed off the list. I have learned that symptoms and side effects become more frightening as I move further down the path.

Our doctor has guided us to choosing what the next steps will be (#thankful). Please pray that a couple of details will fall into place:

1. That approval for compassionate funding of a very costly but crucial drug will take place.
2. That arrangements can be made for treatment closer to home (Red Deer).

More importantly, please pray for Kathy, that somehow she is able to weather yet another dark storm.

In the meantime, I am trying to be okay with not being that sharp. I will try instead to know, deep in a place that google has never gone, that I am loved. That I am seen.  That God has not forgotten me. Going against my deeply ingrained tendency to despair I will try be certain that God will indeed hone within me faith and hope. That God's love will penetrate my thickest darkness. 

After all, it has nothing to do with the knife and everything to do with the One holding that knife. I pray we all can find rest in God's loving hands.