Wednesday, January 7, 2015

A lot going on recently 01/07/15

Happy New Year everyone!

First post of the new year is unfortunately not a wonderful one.  Tom's platelet count has been dropping over the last few weeks and on Friday the 2nd he spiked a fever in the afternoon.  We took him in to the infusion center and they were concerned about the dropping platelets and lack of other presenting symptoms with the fever, so they moved his scheduled bone marrow biopsy up by one week.  They had mentioned that if his platelets had began to recover in the meantime they would hold off on the biopsy until the original scheduled date because they would assume it was all attributable to an infection.

Tom took it easy the rest of Friday and then Joe came down to help tom out Saturday-Sunday.  We had a great Saturday evening down at Pearl and Anthony's for game night and the fever seemed to have subsided.
Sunday around lunch time Tom had a pain in his left side by his rib cage that went from a slight annoying pain to a crippling one in a matter of 20 minutes or so.  We went to the ER and spent the afternoon to early evening there and the generous Jennifer dropped by to deliver us some much needed food since we didn't end up making it to lunch (sorry Joe! We swear it wasn't an extreme way to get out of it! haha). The docs did a chest X-ray and non-contrasted CT scan thinking that the pain sounded like possible kidney stones.  They took blood labs, urine sample, the whole 9 yards to check for any kind of infection.  It all came back clear and while that meant no kidney stones or infection, they said that meant it could possibly be a leukemia relapse. They told Tom it all just came down to pain management for the time being and sent us home.  Tom was concerned about what would happen when the pain got too bad again and they told us to simply come back. We got home around six just in time for my mom's arrival (she came to keep Tom company for the week) and Tom took it easy with lots of pain meds.

At about midnight Tom's pain level got intolerable again so he took some pain meds and waited a bit. When that didn't help we called the ER and headed in again and were there until about 4:30 am getting home just before 5am.  This time they mentioned that earlier's CT scan showed an enlarged spleen and they decided to do a CT with contrast.  It came back and basically just showed that the spleen was still enlarged.  The doc on duty at that point said that he figured that's what was causing all the pain and that unfortunately since they weren't seeing any possible infections or causes, it was possible it could be due to relapse but that the only next step would be to do the biopsy on Tuesday and for the time being just try to manage the pain.

Tuesday came and we went in for Tom's doc appointment.  His platelets were 58 the previous Tuesday, 38 on the Friday, 28 on Sunday afternoon, and 26 when we went in at midnight Sun-Mon night.  Tuesday his platelets had stabilized and not gone up or down so that's good, right? His hgb had also gone from 15 something the previous Tuesday to 12.7 on our midnight ER visit and this Tuesday were back at 13.3 I believe... so that must be good too.  So while the docs are very concerned that there is a high possibility of relapse, it may still be possible that there was some kind of virus or infection that caused the drop in counts and spleen enlargement.  Tom's pain level is still present, but nowhere near as intense and when it is intense it's not for long periods of time he says... so that must also point to the spleen lessening in size... though I'm certainly no doctor, just a worried wife desperately looking for alternative answers.

Due to the high level of concern, the doc has apparently "made a phone call" to get the biopsy results back sooner than normal so we will receive them on Friday and I will have a much shorter blog update for everyone.

Thanks for hanging in there with us, rooting us on, praying for Tom, and keeping us always in your good thoughts and intentions.  Please keep your fingers and toes, thoughts, prayers, and well-intents going for results to be clear of leukemia and for this to have just been something else that he's already kicked.

Also on a side note, Tom's bday is the 22nd and he'll be a whopping 28 so let's hope he's able to ring in this next year with good help and lots of fun ahead. :)

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