Eric's red blood cells, platelets and white blood cells are holding steady. The white cells that had the doctor concerned on Tuesday, turned out to be good white cells (instead of bad white cells that could indicate leukemia developing). The doctor thinks that Eric's low dose chemo not only is keeping his cancer from progressing, but has even helped his bone marrow to develop a few good blood cells.
The new pain killer prescription has helped, and we will tweak the dosage tomorrow morning, which should help even more. Eric's digestive tract, with a lot of help from some over the counter remedies that various medical friends recommended, has settled into a decent schedule. We now have a prescription that the doctor describes as Drano, but hope we never have to use it since he said it has surprising effects for up to 12 hours.
We hope to hear soon that one of Eric's brothers (or even both!) are matches to donate stem cells for the bone marrow transplant.
Eric will have more blood drawn on Monday, and then starts another seven day round of low dose chemo on Thursday. Hopefully this is the last round until we start the big stuff in the hospital in preparation for the bone marrow transplant.
Thank you for your prayers and support! It means a lot to us. We love you!
From Eric: The doctor said that the powerful pain in the bones is normal pain for a situation when the amount of bone marrow in there is twice what the bones were designed to hold: "normal pain" is hard for me to get my mind around. The combined kindness and prayers of all of you serve as a sustaining spirit and are very easy to get my mind around.
All I wish for this birthday is to be a "match" for Eric! I only had 1 candle on my cake this year so I was able to blow out all the candles without too much trouble!!! I sure hope my wish comes true!! Thinking and praying for you, Eric and all of your sweet family!!
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