Update on Chris 5-31-07
Last Thursday, Chris went to Baylor for a doctor’s appointment and chemo. He was unable to have chemo due to low platelets again. His red counts were low too, so they admitted him to give him two units of blood. It was a long day. We were at the hospital until 11:00 that night. Up until he received the blood transfusion, he was feeling very weak. The blood transfusion seemed to help this alot. Chris’ parents kept the kids over the Memorial Day weekend, so Chris and I made several attempts to get out of the house together. His nausea seems to have gotten a lot worse and has been a continuing problem every time we try to do things together. After a long, hard weekend with the nausea, we talked to the nurse and she believes that it is not chemo related, since it is 5 weeks out from the last chemo treatment. It is probably a mixture of his blood counts still being low and also not eating enough while taking so much medication. His pain in his arm seems to be getting a lot worse over the last few weeks. He wakes up in pain several times during the night. This prompted the doctor to order an x-ray on the arm to find out if something has changed. We are still waiting on these results. He also prescribed new pain medication, which seems to be working better.
AFP level… 5 weeks ago, it came back at 16,000 and his last blood draw on Thursday came back at 21,000. It is not uncommon for it to fluctuate like this and this doctor doesn’t seem to value the AFP test as an accurate measurement, like Chris’ former doctors did. So, he doesn’t seem to be too concerned about it.
Today, he was supposed to go in for nerve testing on his arm, but we had to cancel, cause he was too sick with nausea to get up and going. Please pray that we get the nausea under control. A lot of days, he feels great, other than the nausea. He is still working from home and goes into the office for meetings here and there. He would like to go more, if it wasn’t for the nausea.
He is scheduled for a doctor’s appointment and possibly chemo for next Thursday, June 7th. After he receives this next round of chemo, the doctor will do another CT Scan after three weeks, to see how the cancer is responding and if more chemo is required.
Thank you for your continued prayers for Chris and our family.
Love,
Mandy