Urgent Prayer Request: February 23, 2009

Family and Friends,

Thank you for your prayers. I have been gone for 12 hours and had a very difficult day. I ask for continued prayers.I left home at 7: 25 AM and returned home at 7:20 PM.

I met with the dentist at 8 AM due to the tooth/gum pain that developed yesterday. After two different types of x-rays, we began to discover the pain culprit. My teeth were wonderful - no abscesses or cavities. HOWEVER, we discovered something we did not anticipate.

The dentist showed me the x-rays and she said that the floor of my sinus cavity was pressing on the roots of the teeth that were hurting. She speculated that infection or inflammation could be the cause. This pain is on the side where mold grew out on culture.

She sent me to my family doctor. Being the wonderful doctor she is and her concern about protecting me from the flu, she came and sat in my car. We held x-rays up to the bright winter sun to review. My blood was drawn, etc. That might be a new concept - drive through doctoring! She called the ENT who performs the sinus punctures on me, and he wanted x-rays.

I went to a diagnostic imagining center (to avoid the germy hospital) and had sinus x-rays. I had a wonderful tech, who wiped down all the x-ray equipment, etc. with disinfectant and kept me out of public waiting rooms.

I then went onto the ENT's office. I received a report that I did not anticipate. The bones of my sinuses have thinned enough that a tooth root is growing up through it. It is possible that all of the steroids I have taken for the leukemia are causing bone thinning. Thus, the repeat sinus infections are probably due, in part, to this pathway for pathogens. The ENT said for people not in my condition, bone grafts and other surgeries could be considered but I am not a candidate. He called and spoke to my family physician and since my temp was elevated again, they concurred to perform another one of the sinus punctures.

I have shared the agony and descriptions of this horrific procedure in the past. I nearly passed out today. It took 4 punctures to get the device through the bone. I cannot explain the pain and shock that I went through. I 12+ difficult years of leukemia, this rated as the second worst day. In between attempts, I was bleeding alot due to my platelets, so he would have to suction out the blood, repeat, suction, repeat. You get the painful picture. The irrigation part did drain out a very large mass of infection. The doctor said it had a foul smell and he has never told me that. So, he sent me onto the oncologists' infusion center to be desensitized to Augmentin, to take until this new set of cultures reveal what we have discovered. That went without any reactions. I am home in bed.

I need to see God turn this situation around ASAP. Tomorrow I am going for a CT of the sinuses and they decided since it has been 19 months since my last abdominal CT, that we will just check everything out. Another desensitization will be possible, later this week, once the new culture reports are in our possession. If possible, they will perform a bone density scan to see if other bones are thinning from the steroids.

I made the mistake of taking myself today and what is scary I don't even remember the drive after the puncture procedure to the oncologists' office. Be thankful you weren't sharing the roads with me. :-) ..... or maybe you were in that red car I ran off the road. (Just Kidding!)

Will keep you posted. I know and believe He is able to do the impossible. I am asking for God to grow bone for me where it is needed. He can do more than we can ask or imagine.