Mibs and Mabs, Wishes and Prayers

A friend recently commented that when I wrote about chemo medications there was a lot of “mibs and mabs.” It’s true. I’ve previously taken Bortizemib and Ixazomab and others. My current medication is Carfilzomib and after a few months of waiting, wishing, advocating and praying, I will finally start receiving Isatuximab on February 23.

With the reality of the new drug now less than two weeks away, I am doing some of the obligatory reading about receiving Isatuximab. As I do this, there is a nagging voice that is likely familiar to all of us, “Be careful what you wish for.” Isatuximab, like most of the mibs and mabs, has page after page of potential side effects. It is a frightening list. As a cautionary step my doctor will be prescribing a handful of additional meds until we know what the reactions will be. I have been scheduled for extra time in the treatment room for each of the first four weekly infusions so that I can sit there and be observed. Immediate help will be available if the mab oversteps. (And that’s supposed to inspire confidence??)

Be careful what you wish for….

Keep the faith…

We all face the challenge of confidently resting in the surety that God will be enough. That nothing can separate us from his love. Not even the mibs and mabs. With that knowledge we step forward in shaky faith. A faith that Nick Woltersdorff wrote about after his son’s tragic death,  “Faith is a footbridge that you don’t know will hold you up over the chasm until you’re forced to walk out onto it.” (Lament for A Son, Eerdmans Publishing,, 1987)

As we look back over that bridge, Kathy and I see that God has always been enough, given enough, loved enough. Slowly, stubbornly, the apprehension about the new treatment moves to the background and the assurance found in a  Sara Groves lyric fades in:

Really we don’t need much

Just strength to believe

There’s honey in the rock,

There’s more than we see.

In these patches of joy

These stretches of sorrow

There’s enough for today

There will be enough tomorrow. (Enough, from the album Floodplain, 2015)

In all of your patches of joy and stretches of sorrow, in all your own forms of mibs and mabs, I pray that you will be gifted the faith to know that God is enough-–today and tomorrow.