Words can not express the gratitude I feel for all the prayers we’ve received over the past several days. We are not in the clear yet; however, the amount of improvement Joe has made recently is truly miraculous to me.
To say the last four days were hard would be an understatement. The medical team was hoping to get Joe in right away on Thursday to repair his Hickman but right before the pre-work he got a low grade fever. They couldn’t risk a procedure with a possible infection. So we waited with baited breath to see if anything would come from the fever. I truly feel that it was because of all the prayer that nothing did, Praise God. It is fairly common for patients to get a little fever here and there due to any number of things, thankfully this one was a simple short lived non-infectious one.
Each day we’ve seen what most would consider very minor improvements, but to us it’s monumental. This has included walking each day, no new fevers, swelling going down in his mouth and eating protein shakes. Today held two more great improvements. First being that he got his new Hickman placed. Like I said before, it was determined that the fever was not due to infection, so we’ve got the go ahead for the procedure. The second (and most exciting) was that his white count came up a point! This means that engraftment has begun!!!
Although he is on the upswing he is definitely not clear from the risk of infection. (side note: Infection is something we will always have to be cautious of, the high risk will diminish with time but unfortunately we will have to be extremely cautious for quite some time.) Going forward we expect that the count will continue to climb but there is no way to predict how quickly it will do so. Since he is now officially engrafting on top of praying against infections we also need to pray against Grafts Versus Host Disease (GVHD).
If all goes well we could be out of the hospital and back to the apartment here as soon as next week! His discharge date will be based on a few different things. 1) His white count coming up 2) No major GVHD complications 3) Being fever and infection free and 4) Not being dependent on transfusions. (Right now he gets at least one transfusion of blood, platelets, magnesium or potassium a day.) In your prayers for him please lift up those four things specifically so that we can get him the heck out of here and allow him a full night of sleep!
We love you all so much and cherish every prayer and word of encouragement that is sent our way. Thank you so much for continuing to walk this journey along side us.
Each day we’ve seen what most would consider very minor improvements, but to us it’s monumental. This has included walking each day, no new fevers, swelling going down in his mouth and eating protein shakes. Today held two more great improvements. First being that he got his new Hickman placed. Like I said before, it was determined that the fever was not due to infection, so we’ve got the go ahead for the procedure. The second (and most exciting) was that his white count came up a point! This means that engraftment has begun!!!
Although he is on the upswing he is definitely not clear from the risk of infection. (side note: Infection is something we will always have to be cautious of, the high risk will diminish with time but unfortunately we will have to be extremely cautious for quite some time.) Going forward we expect that the count will continue to climb but there is no way to predict how quickly it will do so. Since he is now officially engrafting on top of praying against infections we also need to pray against Grafts Versus Host Disease (GVHD).
If all goes well we could be out of the hospital and back to the apartment here as soon as next week! His discharge date will be based on a few different things. 1) His white count coming up 2) No major GVHD complications 3) Being fever and infection free and 4) Not being dependent on transfusions. (Right now he gets at least one transfusion of blood, platelets, magnesium or potassium a day.) In your prayers for him please lift up those four things specifically so that we can get him the heck out of here and allow him a full night of sleep!
We love you all so much and cherish every prayer and word of encouragement that is sent our way. Thank you so much for continuing to walk this journey along side us.
