Chefdaddy Update

My dear friends,
Thank you all for your kind words and prayers.
A few days ago my sons team of doctors came into his room in the morning after another repeated night of severe pain. They asked me how the night went though the night nurse had already had told them that he maybe had two hours of sleep due to the pain. This was around day 26 of being in the hospital. My kids and I then braced ourselves to hear the bad news we were hoping not to hear, that his liver had started failing and the end was near. His ammonia levels had jumped exceedingly high a few nights before which is the bi-product of a failing liver. To our complete amazement they instead told us that the fast rise was an incorrect reading probably due to the blood that had been drawn for the test had most likely not been put on ice fast enough. But what really blew us away was that they went on to tell us that the other parts of the blood tests had showed that his liver had in fact survived the full treatment of chemo and that a bone marrow biopsy was scheduled for next Wednesday which will officially determine if he is once again back in remission! Praise God!!! This is a total miracle! A month ago they gave him absolutely no hope of surviving and that he had about two weeks. They told him that they might be able to give him a low dose of chemo and that it might give him a month, but the risk of causing his damaged liver to completely fail was great. He then asked if they could give him the full dosage of chemo to completely kill the leukemia and they said "no" that it would certainly put his damaged liver into complete failure and that it would be a very painful death. He then told them that he wasn't going to just sit around for two weeks waiting to die and that he wanted the full dosage. They finally agreed to grant his wishes and here we are now! Praise God! It was an extremely frightening month of one set back after another, but God is faithful. I am so very proud of my very brave 15 year old son who has been fighting this damned disease since 2006.

I bring him home tomorrow. I am very nervous as his white blood cells are still low and he is neutropenic and he can barely walk using a walker and with my daughter and I holding him up with his gate belt.

I need to jump off but I will try to get back soon to give you another update.

I love you all!
Mike