The Long Wait...

It is a sleepy Monday afternoon, and thankfully pretty boring around here. Lots of just waiting around. Ian's intestines are clearing up (yay!!) and he wants to try the exercise bike today, so that is good. His hair started to fall out a few days ago...his beard is patchy and pretty much gone now. His liver tests are causing red flags again, so they are trying to figure out what medication might be causing the trouble. Also the steroids they have been giving him to prevent reaction to blood transfusions have been causing high blood pressure, so they are starting to give him medication for that. Crazy how many pills and bags of chemicals his body has absorbed these past few weeks. We plan to do lots of juicing to detox once he is back home...

Today is the fourth day of giving him the growth hormone. No growth detected yet. They expect to see his white blood cells start to return sometime in the next four days. Once he has over a thousand white blood cells and is producing his own platelets, he should be free to come home. We keep hearing different accounts of how long this break will be, but it is now looking like two to four weeks.

For clarification - I had written earlier about a biopsy a few days after the first round of chemo to see if he needed a "bonus round." Turns out this is not the case. They decided to give him the highest, strongest dose of chemo possible since he is young and strong, and when they give this maximum dose they don't even do the biopsy because everything is surely destroyed. So thankfully, no bonus round...

As for the original biopsy results, we are still waiting for the full report. Initial results are looking like he is in the intermediate risk category, and molecular tests should show further high or low risk within that general intermediate category. These will all be taken into account to help the doctors decide further treatment.

Prayer Points:

* Please pray for Ian's liver, that they might quickly fix whatever is causing trouble.

* Please pray for protection of his body while his blood pressure keeps rising from the steroids.

* Please pray that his body will be able to quickly restore white blood cells and platelets. Usually platelets take the longest, so please pray especially for those. And again, please pray that ONLY healthy cells grow back and no cancer is detected when they do the biopsy in a couple weeks. A clear biopsy after this chemo session is one of the main prognosis factors for his leukemia. But of course, no matter what the results, we are setting our hearts to focus on the Lord and not the statistics...

* Please pray wisdom for the team of doctors working on Ian's case. Pray for Divine guidance as they interpret the test results and make future treatment decisions.

* Please pray for endurance for Ian on this last leg of the treatment. Days and nights are passing so, so s...l...o...w...l...y.. for him. Pray that Jesus would be close to his heart and mind, strengthening him moment by moment to finish this race.

Thank you so, so much for walking alongside us through this. We do not have time to reply to each of your comments, but please know our hearts are so encouraged to know you are following our story and keeping us in prayer.