Prayers are needed for peace more than ever before. Joe has his next bone marrow biopsy tomorrow.
This is the big one for us as it will determine the efficacy of the chemo and whether or not he is eligible for transplant. They will not move us forward to transplant unless he is in remission (or extremely close). This is because unless the cancer is gone (or very nearly), it is likely to grow back post transplant.
Our prayer is obviously that the treatment was successful in killing 100% of the cancer. The doctor explained that while they will move forward if there are a Very small number of cancer cells, they do not like to. They’ve found that even with the most miniscule amount of dieses still present, it decreases the success rate of transplant by about 50%. So if you would, please join us in praying for a Complete remission.
Like I said before, prayers for peace would be greatly appreciated as well. We are trying our best to rest in the knowledge that our Lord has us covered, however after the last several months that has become increasingly hard. Every time we talked to a doctor about the statistical success rates of this MEC chemo the numbers seemed to go down. We somehow went from being told there was a 70% chance of success to a mere 25%. If it weren’t so terrifying, it would be laughable. (To be clear they were not lying to us, different doctors have different options, and the first rate was base on overall remission rates from chemo (vs. clinical trial), not strictly the MEC regime) I share this not to be dramatic or to insight fear but rather to invoke prayer and to turn eyes to our Lord in praise when we (hopefully) get good news next week.
Joe has really done amazingly well this go around. It’s night and day from the first round of chemo. There have been several times that I have reflected back and been able to see more clearly that the first round was much harder than I could wrap my head around. There were so many weird side effects that I didn’t (or refused to) recognize the seriousness of at the time. This round there really has been nothing notable other that a little gut irritation. No fevers, rash, no nausea, no headaches and most importantly no sleepless hospital stays (other than the first 5 days)! What a huge blessing.
In other good news, we get to go home for a few days!!!! It has been a month since we’ve been home and gotten to spend more than a few hours at a time with Arleigh. To say we are looking forward to it would be an understatement. As of right now, we’ll go to clinic tomorrow for the biopsy and to check his levels and then we’ll get to hit to road Thursday morning. We expect to get the results from the biopsy on Monday. If they are good I expect that we will need to head back up to Duke for his pre-transplant work up on Tuesday. (I’ll address the details of transplant in another post.) If remission was not reached (Lord willing this will Not be the case) then we will head back up to Duke and figure out what clinical trials are open.
There is much to pray about these next several days. Again, thank you for your willingness to join us in this. I will do my best to post at least a short update you with the results quickly.
Our prayer is obviously that the treatment was successful in killing 100% of the cancer. The doctor explained that while they will move forward if there are a Very small number of cancer cells, they do not like to. They’ve found that even with the most miniscule amount of dieses still present, it decreases the success rate of transplant by about 50%. So if you would, please join us in praying for a Complete remission.
Like I said before, prayers for peace would be greatly appreciated as well. We are trying our best to rest in the knowledge that our Lord has us covered, however after the last several months that has become increasingly hard. Every time we talked to a doctor about the statistical success rates of this MEC chemo the numbers seemed to go down. We somehow went from being told there was a 70% chance of success to a mere 25%. If it weren’t so terrifying, it would be laughable. (To be clear they were not lying to us, different doctors have different options, and the first rate was base on overall remission rates from chemo (vs. clinical trial), not strictly the MEC regime) I share this not to be dramatic or to insight fear but rather to invoke prayer and to turn eyes to our Lord in praise when we (hopefully) get good news next week.
Joe has really done amazingly well this go around. It’s night and day from the first round of chemo. There have been several times that I have reflected back and been able to see more clearly that the first round was much harder than I could wrap my head around. There were so many weird side effects that I didn’t (or refused to) recognize the seriousness of at the time. This round there really has been nothing notable other that a little gut irritation. No fevers, rash, no nausea, no headaches and most importantly no sleepless hospital stays (other than the first 5 days)! What a huge blessing.
In other good news, we get to go home for a few days!!!! It has been a month since we’ve been home and gotten to spend more than a few hours at a time with Arleigh. To say we are looking forward to it would be an understatement. As of right now, we’ll go to clinic tomorrow for the biopsy and to check his levels and then we’ll get to hit to road Thursday morning. We expect to get the results from the biopsy on Monday. If they are good I expect that we will need to head back up to Duke for his pre-transplant work up on Tuesday. (I’ll address the details of transplant in another post.) If remission was not reached (Lord willing this will Not be the case) then we will head back up to Duke and figure out what clinical trials are open.
There is much to pray about these next several days. Again, thank you for your willingness to join us in this. I will do my best to post at least a short update you with the results quickly.
