Five years ago, my wife was diagnosed with Chronic Mylogenous Leukemia. As we began to understand what was happening, we had many tears, but put our trust in the Lord. This summer marks a milestone. Left untreated, CML life expectancy is about five years. But we thank God for the work of many scientists (surely some of them – most? – unregenerated). Two years prior to our diagnosis, they had successfully brought to approval the new wonder drug, Gleevec.

Gleevec turned a death sentence into a chronic condition, with next to no side effects for my dear wife. (Except she complains about gaining back the weight she lost with active leukemia!)

Newsweek has an article called “A Step Past Chemotherapy” that describes some of the new approaches being taken in treating cancers of all kinds, following the path blazed largely by Gleevec.

In the article, these are the lines that got me thinking about our milestone:

Such glitches take place within a complex network of genes and proteins, all of them performing specific duties to keep cancer alive. Targeted drugs interrupt various pathways in this network. One significant advance in this new approach is Gleevec, approved in 2001 to treat chronic myeloid leukemia. Gleevec clamps down on the cell’s accelerator, a protein called tyrosine kinase, which drives cancer to reproduce.

Essentially, Gleevec zeros in on the mutated white blood cells that show up in my wife’s blood stream and kills them, allowing the normal cells to function properly and proliferate. Which apparently makes her life expectancy about the same as anyone else. I have given her these comforting words: “You’ll live long enough to die of something else.”

We don’t dwell on it. Our tears and fears are long past. My wife takes a couple of pills every morning and life goes on. We are very thankful to be able to serve the Lord together still. But as I realized this summer is a milestone of sorts, I am full of thankfulness to our Lord who does all things well.