Monday's Doctor Visit

Hello everyone,

Sorry to be posting two days after Ben's appointment but we have been exhausted and swamped with things to do!!!

Ben's Doctor Visit went well even though it took ALL DAY!!! Ugghhh, we left at 8am and got home at 6pm!! But luckily most of them will be much shorter!! We also took a break in the middle of the day to run a different errand so it was crazy but we made it through.

Okay so the test results came in for the M.B.R.(Micro Biological Resolution) This was the test I was telling you about on the micro cellular level. Negative is when there are less than .1% of luekemia cells in Ben's Bone Marrow. Negative is good and what we need to move on to phase two of his treatment!! The test came back Negative! What an answer to prayers!! We also want ben's ANC (ABSOLUTE NUETRIPHIL COUNT--- a multiplication of his white blood cells and nuetrophils) to be above 750 to move into phase two. His ANC was 1748!!!! Yeah we are finished with phase one and moving on to phase two.
They performed another spinal tap on ben to check his spinal fluid for leukemia cells and to inject another round of chemo into his spine. The purpose of this procedure and particular Chemo drug is to keep leukemia out of Ben's spine. If he gets it in his spinal fluid then we are looking at Radiation on his brain. So we are praising God that these spinal taps are still coming back negative.
We also recieved another prescription for a new Chemo drug so Ben is currently on three different medications, the first in his spine, the second in his blood stream through I.V. and now this new one that is a pill and he started that last night. So far he slept right through the night and didn't get sick but they say that reactions to Therapy happen 24-48 hours later so we will continue to pray that he does not have any bad reactions.

Ben's bone pain seems to have subsided for now. Thank you so much for your prayers in this because the poor little guy was suffering badly from it!! We are praying that he won't have many flair ups of this and that his pain will be minimal.

Ben is continuing to lose weight now that he is done with the steroid therapy!! He is feeling much better and every day able to get back to more and more activities that he is used to doing.

Ben's appointment's for October are the 5th, 12th, and 26th so I will be sure to post after to update you on how thing's are looking.

Thank you all

Jamie