The past few days

Many of you know what's been going on, but a few don't, so I will start with a chronicle of what has happened since Friday morning. Ryan had a bad cough last week and I urged him to get to the doctor. Aubrey had been sick and was finally getting over things and I didn't want her getting it again. He went to the doctor and they called me to come pick him up. He was acting faint, but was otherwise wasn't showing any signs of anything, except maybe dehydration. The ambulance came because he went a little unconscious when I came to pick him up. We went to the ER at Wayne Hospital and when they got his bloodwork and chest X-ray back, the doctor told us that the news wasn't good. They did a few more tests and then decided that we would be heading to Miami Valley.

We arrived at Miami Valley on Friday night about 7:00. The doctor was in within the hour ordering more tests and talking to us about what might be going on. They also did a bone marrow biopsy and we got those results back Saturday late morning. He was diagnosed with Precursor T-cell Acute Lymphblastic Lymphoma/Leukemia. What a shock! It was a bit unbelievable to say the least. We were (and still are) thankful to God that the doctor who was seeing him practices in Greenville and we've been told is one of the best cancer doctors here.

Ryan's white blood cell count was 10 times higher than the normal. He had (it is still there) a mass in his chest which is a swollen. His kidneys were also not functioning at their normal level. Because the white count was so high, they wanted to filter out his blood before starting chemo. They performed a process called neurophreneisis (spelling?). They took out his blood and filtered as many white cells out as they could and put his good blood back.

They started chemo on Sunday afternoon around 4:30. He gets a treatment every 12 hours for 3 days, the final one will be tomorrow morning at 4:30 AM. All his numbers are improving. His kidneys have begun to function better. He was using at catheter, but they have removed that. His counts are going down, the direction they want them to go.

He seems very tired this evening while I'm here, but he has talked a little. He is keeping his spirits up, thinking about his students at school a lot. He is actually getting ready for bed now so I'm going to head home and let him rest.

We appreciate all the gifts, visits, and especially all the prayers. We serve a wonderful GOD and we pray each and every day that the drugs will do their job and we'll get Ryan back home very soon.