Update & Request for Prayer: July 7, 2009

I did not feel well today as I battled nausea and a bad headache all day (yet still managed to watch Lil Man all day). Also, today I saw my family physician, had acupuncture and had labs drawn. We are rejoicing at some good reports that I wanted to report tonight.

The praises - with tonight's lab results, the leukemia has been restaged from Stage IV (worst stage there is) to Stage II. Woooppeeeee! The spleen and lymph nodes did not feel any smaller this week to my doctor, so God needs to work on those for me.

My platelets are up to 148,000. They have been as low as 80,000 since beginning treatment. Platelets under 100,000 cause me to be staged at Stage IV. So that improvement bumped me to Stage III. My hemoglobin was 11 - that was a welcome improvement as I have had difficulty breathing with hemoglobin as low as 7.9 since beginning treatment. Hemoglobin above 10.0 restages me to Stage II. I will need a normal sized spleen and liver to make the next step to Stage I leukemia.

My total WBC is 52,300 tonight (normal is 5000-10,000). While I need this count to decline further, it is a big improvement from the 167,800 white blood count prior to treatment. When I calculated my Absolute Lymphocyte Count (ALC) - B-cell lymphs being what is cancerous - the ALC has dropped from 166,122 to 50,731 - that is over a 70 percent reduction. Are you singing praises with me?

I rejoice at the progress I have seen - I don't believe any of my trusted specialists I have seen anticipated that I would have these kind of improvements, given their "end stage" prognosis. God is always able to do more than we can ask or imagine.

Prayer Requests.......

I do remain borderline neutropenic, so I will receive Neupogen injections again tomorrow and Thursday. I do not want to be neutropenic as that opens the doors to infection.

My uric acid remains elevated and my kidney function counts escalated somewhat. We are watching these and need to keep me well hydrated to prevent Tumor Lysis Syndrome that I have mentioned before. I will receive IV hydration tomorrow after I complete the treatment.

Today, I added another weapon to my arsenal - beta glucans. Researchers at the University of Louisville are studying beta glucans' role with enhancing Rituxan's effectiveness against leukemia. Thus, why I have decided to add 7 of these capsules a day as a possible booster to the treatment I am taking.

Please pray for me tomorrow and Thursday as I return for my all day treatments both days. After Thursday, I will have 8 treatments completed and 8 treatments remaining -half way finished!