As we endure this roller coaster ride, I am comforted by God’s words; That He will not give me more than I can endure. I know God is with us during this trying time or we wouldn’t have gotten this far. We lean on Him to give us the strength to carry on this fight.
Dad’s strength is being tested daily. Dad has had many battles this last week leaving him very critical. Around 04:00 Tuesday morning, Dad woke up with severe chest pain that knocked the breath out of him. He felt as if his heart muscle was contracting. They ran many tests, including a complete heart workup and chest x-rays. All of the heart tests came back negative, but the chest x-ray show some infiltrate, causing them to test further with a CT Scan, which showed many shadows. This provided great concern requiring a bronchoscopy (a scope into his lungs) on Wednesday. The bronchoscopy went as well as it could with Dad’s white blood cell count (wbc) being below 400, his hemoglobin around 8, and his platelets 12,000. With his counts so low, they were unable to obtain a biopsy for fear of hemorrhage, but did obtain bronchial washings. What they found was that Dad has pneumonia in his left lung and also has fluid around his heart (pericardial effusion).
What does all this mean? If the fluid around Dad’s heart builds up slowly, Dad’s heart will be able to compensate for it. However if the fluid builds up quickly, it will not. This is what is causing him chest pain and some breathing difficulties. Also his pulse is irregular and elevated as a result, ranging around 130-140 most of the time.
The pneumonia is also providing breathing difficulties and Dad is back on oxygen at 7 liters. Dad has been running high temps of over 102 since Tuesday and a nodule came up on his left side (on the outside of his skin). Dad had surgery today where they biopsied the nodule to see if it is cancer, a fungal infection, or something else. His temp was 103, with his wbc of 300, his hemoglobin 7, and his platelets at 17,000 at the start. When he finished his temp was 104.3 and we iced him down with 5 bags of ice and put cool cloths on his head, wrists, and legs. Praise God his temp came down to 100.6 when we left recovery one hour later. Dad did very well and had no complications from surgery. He received blood and platelet transfusions postoperatively.
Dad’s counts have been critically low for more than 3 weeks now. Dad is receiving Neupogen shots to raise his wbc to help him fight these infections. The doctor told us several weeks ago surviving this leukemia relapse with the bone marrow transplant is like Dad up against Tiger Woods in a golf tournament; and they are doing everything they can to try and even out the playing field. It is not impossible, but very challenging. Next week Dad will have a bone marrow biopsy regardless of his counts to see if he is in remission and try and see what is going on with his bone marrow production. There is concern that the chemo might not have killed the leukemia.
Thank you all for your prayers, without them the fight would have been over a long time ago. We thank God for his mercy and grace each day and know the statistics are just numbers and God has the power to beat any numbers given to us. Thank you for all the encouragement and support you are showing my family during this time.
