Urgent Request for Prayer: September 10, 2009

I need your prayers once again. A second fungal infection in my lungs has grown out on culture. It has been sent to Texas for identification and to run the sensitivities to see which drugs it will respond. I need an outright miracle from God to stop these dangerous infections in their tracks. I need God to correct the problems as I cannot depend on any one drug right now or my fractured immune system. I need "de-fungied" - I don't believe that is a word, but it accurately describes what I need - a clean sweep of my internal body by the Hand of Almighty God.

Today, I received Day 7 of the first IV antifungal. I had returned home around 11 AM and then heard from my family physician around 1 PM that the second culture was positive. So, I had to return to the oncologist's office. They ran a CBC (still waiting on results). It is imperative that I do not become neutropenic (low infection fighting cells) at this time.

I presented the oncologist with several journal abstracts that documented the value of Neupogen injections (Thanks, Dr. Hamblin!) when fighting severe fungal infections. He agreed with my research and it appears (for now) that insurance is going to approve. My oncologist faxed this research to Anthem. If all goes as planned with Anthem, I will begin ten straight days of Neupogen in the morning. I am already going seven days a week for IV Micafungin, so this will be administered after the Micafungin each day.

Neupogen has several side effects, but always the worst for me is the deep bone pain that it causes. Neupogen stimulates my bone marrow so that it will produce and release bands (baby neutrophils) that will grow up and mature into infection fighting neutrophils. And as that bone marrow is prompted to produce and release these cells, severe, deep bone pain results. OUCH.

If my readers learn nothing else from my blog, I pray that each of you will learn to be an advocate for yourself when medical issues arise. Educate yourselves about the disease you are battling. Be your own best advocate, armed with documented journal articles/abstracts. Never back down when your insurance company says, "NO" to a request that you and your physicians know is in your best interest. And always depend upon God as your Healer, Comforter, and Deliverer.