Can you believe it has been a month already since Josh's last bone marrow test? We were surprised as well! We went for bloodwork and review this Wednesday, and we were please with the results. Remember that Josh's platelets had been falling? Well they were up a bit this month, so that was very exciting for us. Hopefully that is the start of a trend and next month maybe they will be back up to the normal range. They were 113 this week and normal is 140-440 for those of you interested in numbers. His white blood cell count was also a bit higher this time, and I consider that good. He was at the bottom of the normal range, and there is the possibility of going too low, so we were happy to see it right in the midrange of normal.
Other than that things have been fine. They got the other test results from the bone marrow back, but they told us they didn't have a good sample to test with. They were only able to test a small portion of it, but what they did test looked great. They were looking for the Philadelphia chromosome and they didn't find any, so that is good. It would have been nice to have a complete test, though! They said for some reason sometimes the cultures just don't grow like they are supposed to and there was no real reason for it.
Please pray for Joshua to have continued rest! Besides the crazy rash and itching it is his only other major complaint. He has started taking his meds at a different time to hopefully enable him to get some coffee to drink on the way home. He was taking them at 9:30 AM and PM, but now he has switched to taking them as soon as he wakes in the evening around 5 and then again at 5AM. That is a little tricky cause he has to take them at work, and his desk is so very busy it can be hard to time things like that. But we did splurge and get him a fancy watch that he can set alarms on and that has been helping (you know, when he remembers to put it on and bring it with him).
And ya'll, this is just from me, but please pray for him to not feel so burdened all the responsibilities he has. He has the weight of the world on his shoulders, and then to add in a difficult job, managing leukemia, and our ever dwindling finances, well, it has been hard. Please pray peace for him and that he can learn to truly relax when he has the opportunity. He took a couple of vacation days and we spent them together at the state homeschool convention and it was a really nice escape. And it really helped for us to be reminded of why we do what we do! I know it encouraged both of us, so we're praying that this encouragement pushes us through this next hard period. We appreciate your prayers joining ours! :) Thanks, friends!
