4.23.08

John is doing very well regarding mood and pain management and blood levels and there is no sign of the vasculitis spots, etc. So that is all good.

There are, however, new and ...interesting?? things going on with his glucose levels and his leg swelling. His glucose levels are no longer making much sense. The pattern of when he reads high or low or when/how often he needs an insulin shot is starting to fluctuate. It was slow at first, he didn't even notice. I did, then I'd get accused of being a worry wart. But the last 48 hours he's noticed that things aren't quite making sense anymore too. He commented on it this morning. It may be nothing; we hope it's nothing. But it's worth noting. The other thing is his leg swelling. There are times when it swells up so badly that you can't realy see a knee or ankle; then there are times that it looks fine. What's ...interesting?? is that it doesn't seem to be exclusively correlated with his amount of activity. You'd think if he's up and overdoing it would swell and if he's not then it wouldn't ...but that's not always the case. Sometimes he is up and about for hours and hours and nothing happens. Other times he has been taking it very easy, sleeping even, and it swells up like there's air in it. Again, nothing to worrisome. It's just interesting to note that it's not making any sense anymore.

So, we stay on our toes and we continue to take it day by day.

One last thing, for you wonderful people who like to pray specifically, there's this uneasy feeling I am having about his chemo. He's been on it for weeks, then off, now back on. This is the oral type of chemo that can cause leukemia and bladder cancer. The longer he's on it, the worse. I don't know if it's just me or if there's really something to this but latey I have been having people say to me ...LOTS of people ... that John really needs to get off this med. They say it with urgency like I haven't had people express things to me as long as John's been sick. I wouldn't even have noticed except that there have been SO many people in SUCH a short period of time it's like the universe is yelling it at me. Where there wasn't fear before, there is now. Should John still be on this med? How long does he need to stay on it? When does he get a break? When can he move to a lesser chemo with fewer potentially fatal side effects? The whisper in my head is starting to be more of a shout. So, we will bring this up at the next doc appt (a week from Friday I believe) and until then I ask that you ...

-Please pray that this medication does only the good of what it's capable of and none of the bad.
-Please pray that John's body is strong enough to handle such a harmful substance in his body for this long without long term ramifications (it can take 2-3 years before the cancer shows itself).
-Please pray that the doctor knows what the heck he's doing by prescribing this course of action.
-Please pray that John can come off this type of chemo sooner rather than later.

Thanks. We need it.
k