And now we wait...

This has been a crazy week, to say the least. There has been so much going on that I don't know where to begin. I guess it all started last week when Jimmy accidentally scratched himself and developed an area of irritation and then a day later fevers of up to 102. Wait, let me go back further for just a minute...as many of you may recall, Jimmy has been in remission from Hairy Cell Leukemia for about 2 years now. He has been going to his check ups as scheduled (every 3 mos) since he went into remission. At his last visit, in November, his counts were noted to be still dropping. What this means is that his immune system is not working correctly. His red blood cell count is still good and normal and his platelet count is basically normal, which is all good. When he was diagnosed the first time all three counts were very low. So, because of his continually dropping white count, his oncologist wanted to recheck him in 1 month instead of 3. But, before he could get in for that appt, he developed this infection.

Everybody up to speed? Good. He was seen by his primary care doctor on Friday and cultures were taken and labs drawn to check his white count. He was started on medication to treat the infection and given pain meds to enable him to get the much needed rest. Unfortunately, I was scheduled to go out of town, so I was unable to tend to him over the weekend, but it was all good. He pretty much just slept all weekend and we were in touch via phone frequently. If I had needed to get to him I could have easily enough. His biggest complaint was that I had his ATM card with me so he couldn't send Patrick out to get him any Chinese food. Poor Baby!

On Monday we got a call from his primary care doc with the news that his white count was still pretty low and that he did need to see his oncologist as scheduled..which we would have done anyway. His culture results were not back yet but we expect them soon. We went to the oncologist on Tuesday, not too sure if they were going to do another bone marrow biopsy or not, but felt pretty sure they would, and they did. For those of you who may be weak of stomach, you may want to skip the rest of this paragraph.... The process for collecting bone marrow is not pleasant. the nice part this time is that they did give him some ativan to help with the anxiety, since now he knows what to expect. He was nice and chilled out by the time they got started. He was numbed pretty well down into the muscle so that was good, but the numbing process is not real comfortable. Once he was good and numb, the doctor took a needle, about the size of a stylus, and pushed it, with great effort, into Jimmy's hip bone. Now at this point, they usually are able to withdraw, or aspirate, some liquid bone marrow, but due to the history of hairy call leukemia, they were unable to do this. It was essentially a dry aspirate. So the process changed to, what boils down to, a scraping of bone marrow and bone. They use a bigger needle for this. It is not an easy specimen to obtain and takes a lot of force, on the part of the doctor, to get an adequate specimen. The after effects of all of this is a lot of pain for Jimmy during the recovery stage. Hopefully, the doctor was able to get enough marrow to get us some answers to the question of whether he has relapsed or not.

We will most likely not get any results until the end of the week or the beginning of next week. This will be a long weekend. It is different than before when he was diagnosed because we are catching it early, if there has been a relapse. According to the oncologist, if he is out of remission, he will be getting chemo again. Luckily, if they follow the same protocol, it is one week of outpatient chemo and close monitoring after that. At least we know what to expect this time.

I would have to say that his spirits are not as up as they were the last time. He is pretty tired all the time and is currently in pain on and off all day. I have to go back to work tomorrow so he will be back to caring for the kids some and having to be available for them. They are doing OK with all of this, they have been through it before and we keep them pretty much informed of things so that there are no surprises.

I had some doubts as to whether or not I should tell Steven about what is going on, I was concerned that it would cause him to worry and I can't afford for him to be distracted right now. I have been asked, by friends, if I think it is necessary for Steven to come home, I think they were thinking it would be an appropriate excuse to get him out of Iraq, but I don't think I agree. Sure, I would love to have him home, out of harms way. But it is not the right thing to do at this time. We will be able to manage just fine and we are able to stay in touch regularly, so he can get updates easily enough. If things get really bad we can get him home if we need to, but we are no where near that stage. I just want Steven to be able to keep his head in the game and keep himself safe. But I can't keep things from him either. He let me know, in no uncertain terms, that I am not to keep things from him. He told me he would be very angry with me if I keep him out of the loop and then spring something major on him all of a sudden. I can totally appreciate where he is coming from and will respect his wishes, to the best of my ability. Sounds like I'm taking an oath or something, Huh?

This has turned out to be a much longer post than I had thought it would be, sorry if it's too detailed, but I really felt like it was time to give an update and put a prayer request out there for the strength of our family. We are all hanging in there and taking it one day at a time. I will try to keep things current, even if it is just a quick note. It is going to be a long week, it has been already.