From Elisabeth
James asked me to send out another prayer update today. He was running late for work this morning, but he wanted to keep everybody in the loop.
Yesterday he received his first dose of beta interferon. He still hasn't been trained on giving the injections, but since we had the drug and since he has a nurse on-campus at his work he was able to work things out. The side effects are just as bad as we were told they would be, although there was enough of a delay that he was able to drive home and eat supper before it became painful to move. He was joking last night that the good part was that his head hurt enough that he no longer noticed the pain in his groin. At the moment we are trying to figure out what the best schedule for his weekly flu will be. The good news is that the side effects wore off in about nine hours, so it shouldn't interfere with his work.
We're still seeing signs of improvement, although they are falling along the lines of "somewhat functional" and not to the point of the original "manufacturer's specifications". He would like for there to be more vision out of the corner of his eye and for a little bit more sensation to return to the bottom's of his feet, since he can't serve in the nursery if he doesn't know if he's stepping on people. But James is very pragmatic about limitations, seeing his abilities more than he sees his disabilities.
Our big prayer request at the moment is that God will give the physician's clarity to know whether or not his remission medications are working or whether he is just naturally healing. If the new drug works correctly, it will strengthen the blood/brain barrier (so far his brain has been unaffected) and change the T-cells which have been attacking his myelin sheath from inflammatory cells to anti-inflammatory cells. However, since we don't know whether he has any T-cells attacking his myelin sheath or whether it's related to weird B-cell activity (which I don't understand since my brain got over-full while the doctor was explaining both neurological disorders) or whether it's something completely different, at the moment we have no way of knowing whether or not this drug is doing anything beneficial.
Thank you for all of your prayers. It's as if God has carried us through this on eagle's wings.
James pointed out to a friend that Jesus said that when an illness isn't the result of somebody's sin, it comes into your life for the glory of God. We know that this isn't a lifestyle-related illness, so we are praying that God would be glorified someway, somehow, in all of this mess.
Thanks again for your prayers,
Elisabeth
