Photo Caption: Before and after–Josh thought he was dead and then came back to life! lol
Josh had a painful bone marrow aspiration done today. Thank you to everyone who has been praying for that to go well. It went as well as it could have. Josh opted to receive pain medication through his IV, but it didn’t seem to help much. He was able to have his favorite bone marrow biopsy physician–an experienced and husky man names Brian to do the procedure which really helps him. Plus, they have the love for fishing in common and talking about fishing before jamming a drill on his back hip to extract a piece of his bone made a big difference to him! The best thing was that Brian had done the last three of these where Josh has prayed with him in the past couple of months. When I told him I was praying for him right before the needle went into his back, Brian said Josh could say a prayer beforehand if he’d like and of course he took the opportunity and got to pray out loud in the pretense of two nurses! In about two weeks, we will get the results and should find out if there is any MDS disease remaining. Even if he doesn’t seem to have anymore MDS the doctor may want to treat it simply because Josh is high-risk. The way would they treat it is by giving Josh a drug to kill the remaining MDS. Our prayer is that this drug would not be needed. We try to take the least amount of drugs as possible. His medication list right now is down to only four different medications. They weaned him off a couple and others were prescribed as needed for pain and nausea which he’s been blessed to not have hardly any need for. During a pre-transplant class, they warned us that Josh may be on 30 different meds. We praise God–the great physician for His care!
Josh is doing very well! All his counts are up and he is recovering steadily despite a lingering cold. We thank God for protecting Josh from getting the flu and hope that this cold will soon be history. We hope that this whole process will soon be history and that we may look back and reminisce the faithfulness and presence of our Lord amiss this storm. Josh’s platelet count was 111–just shy of the low normal of 150 for any ordinary non-transplant person! Also, both his red and white blood counts went up from a couple days ago! Even his neutrophil count went up slightly!
Noah is doing very well too! He had a cough after the flu died down, but that seems to have dwindled as well. On the other hand, Nathan seems to have a bit of a relapse with his flu… Just when we thought he was on the tail end of it, he started getting irritable; his temperature hovers around 99 degrees. With a low-grade fever and him not acting like himself, we are trying to give him some extra TLC and prayers!
Thank you, everyone, who has brought over meals and reached out to help our little family in many ways! Thank you for your prayers… we realize that besides the physical elements, there are very real spiritual battles going on that are won in prayer! Keep on!
This Thorny Rose 