Lazy Sunday

Not much going on again today. Ryan is being a relatively easy patient, the nurses still enjoy joking with him, but he's not requiring much work out of them. He got a new type of chemo today which was a shot in each of his arms. He had to get a very small test dose before the shot to see if his body had a reaction to it or not. He had no reaction and seems to be doing well with the actual chemo. His white count is down again today, 500. The chest x-ray that the doctor ordered for today was to check for infiltrates or fluid in his lungs. There is nothing there. He didn't report about the shadowing that had been seen last Monday, he said another CT scan will need to be done to check on the size of that.

Ryan has watched a little tv today and played Freecell on the computer. We had a few visitors, all family today. I spent most of the day reading. If nothing else, sitting in the hospital is a good place to get reading done.

-A

A Slow Day

Today has been a fairly slow day. Ryan had 2 pumps with lots of antibiotics and other bags hanging the last couple of days. He is down to one pump, with only 2 bags hanging, one of those is fluids. His white count is down to 700 (yesterdays was 1200, not 12,000; I read the paper wrong). He will be getting a chest x-ray tomorrow to look at the mass and see how it is responding to the chemo. By looking at his blood counts alone, he is responding very well. It is the plan that another bone marrow biopsy will be done on day 14 (today is day 4) to see what, if anything, is left in the bone marrow. Ryan is feeling well and eating well so far and he doesn't seem to feel as wiped out after these days of chemo as he did when we went through this before.

We are thankful for the good results so far and continue to praise God for him being the one set of footprints in the sand.

Count Your Blessings

Here are mine:

1. Ryan and Aubrey

2. My parents, Sandy, Diana, and Shannon for selflessly watching Aubrey so much this week.

3. The staff at CTC for their support of us. We are incredibly grateful to whomever gave the money to cover our lack of insurance costs! We are thankful that Ryan can have a computer to use to keep in touch with his students. We are thankful that we had such a great time scratching off lottery tickets tonight - we only did half of them, but we won $25 so far!

4. Everybody who emailed me and offered to help, I will get back to you when I know what I need.

5. A doctor who is real enough to be able to say that God is truly the Great Physician and pray for us.

6. Ryan's body responding to the chemo so quickly, white count is down to 12,000 today and there are no blasts (that's something that signals cancer, but I don't know really what they are) in his blood today.

7. Dr. Marinella removed some of his antibiotics so Ryan doesn't have so much stuff hanging on his IV pump.

8. Clean dishes, clean laundry, a warm house, and comfortable bed.

God is good, all the time.
-A

God makes all things possible, not easy

Well, I guess I jumped the gun. Just when I thought I could report that things are going well, they fall apart! Ryan got sick on the way to work Monday morning. He continued on to school, but called the doctor when he got there. They happened to have an appointment in Greenville at 11:30 and so he worked 1/2 day and then headed to the doctor's office. The doctor checked him out, told him that most likely he had the flu, gave him a couple of prescriptions and told him, just to be on the safe side, that he better get his blood drawn and a chest x-ray done. Ryan went to Wayne Hospital and had those things done. When he left the hospital, the doctor's office called and told him to come back to the office.

They saw some shadowing on his chest x-ray and when they received his blood counts, his white cells were elevated. The doctor then wanted to do a bone marrow biopsy and a CT scan. They tried to schedule those outpatient for Monday afternoon, but the hospital was booked. His doctor told him that if he got admitted that he could get the tests done that night and have results on Tuesday. Ryan decided to be admitted.

They ran the tests and found that the leukemia was back and that there certainly was a spot on his chest where the x-ray showed shadowing. Dr. Marinella, his oncologist, called Dr. Devine, the transplant doctor we saw at OSU to determine the next steps. Ryan is at Miami Valley and has finished his 2nd day of chemo with the new regimen. He will likely be there a month and if his body responds well he will then be ready to head to OSU for the transplant. He will be at OSU in the hospital a month and then will have another month to month and a half of follow-up with the doctor there.

So, Aubrey and I are adjusting again to trying to do baths and everything else without Daddy around.

Ryan's white count was 96,000 before they started the chemo yesterday morning. This morning, the white cells has already fallen to 19,000. His body responded well to the treatment the first day. Hopefully, things will continue to go well.

We appreciate prayers.

Cruising Along

Things are going well around the Wulber household. Ryan was close to being over his cold and cough and then all the sudden began coughing again, so now he's fighting cold all over again. He goes for a bone marrow biopsy the 2nd Friday in February, so we should know by the end of February how things are progressing. According to his blood levels and the chest x-ray and MRI he's had recently, everything should look great.