Matthews Cancer Adventure

One Year Ago!

It was just a year ago when Matthew was graduating High School and preparing to head off to College. 

Then, if you remember, when we were registering him for his first semester we got the call that he had “No evidence of disease!” so the first semester became a distance learning situation which he accomplished while in the hospital going through his Bone Marrow Transplant.

Patience Pays Off 

After a successful BMT and follow-up Radiation treatments Matthew was off to College for the Spring Semester. We knew he was ready in so many ways but he was going from a year and a half of being beat up by Chemo to a full load of challenging classes … so we were understandably constantly in prayer 🕇

And The Grades Are In!

Matthew had a great time, studied very hard and is now home from his first full semester on campus. Just this afternoon he found out that he made it though with a 4.0!!!!! We all couldn’t be more proud!

Summer will of course be filled with lots of sweet Emma time!

Numbers up means visits down!

Today was Matthew ‘s 1st clinic visit since being released from the Bone Marrow Transplant unit on Saturday. 

(video of Matthew being released on Oct 1st)

All his blood work is looking great and they think that this coming Friday will be his LAST CLINIC VISIT with the BMT unit before being transferred back to the oncology clinic and Dr Foster and Peg.

To God be ALL the glory!!!

Even being a autologous donor, getting his own Stem Cells back, this is amazing the doctors!

His restored, rebuilt marrow is gearing up to being close to normal even though it still hasn’t been a full 4 weeks since we went in to start the transplant process. AND … it has only been 21 days since Day ZERO. 

Can you imagine the smile on Matthew’s face! 😀

We still need to be vigilant and clean, and he’s not ready to go hang with crowds just yet and getting sick would not be helpful. They even guard a patient with these miraculous results closely for a few months. But all we could say was THANK YOU LORD!!!

MORE GOOD NEWS …

His PICC line, which they leave in for drawing blood for labs and giving transfusuons, should come out on Friday!!!
They actually just snip a few suechers, slowly pull it out, and put a bandaid on it! WOW!!!
Thank you all so much for your prayers and support. We still need them as the next step will be targeted radiation and then maintenance meds.

So Very Thankful!

Today, after a morning away from the hospital for work, I returned to find a few things missing.

Matthew’s “Isolation” notice on his door was missing.

And two of the medications they had been giving him were removed from his list.

Thank you Lord for these steps in the right direction!!!

And a few things were added … namely some food items in the form of beef jerky, applesauce and Fig Newtons. This pleased the doctors so much that they reduced his IV food from a constant 24 hours to just 18 hours per day.Is it possible that Matthew can eventually head home without the need for IV food? Lord please let that be so!!!

On a sad note … Mom had a class to attend after teaching all day and then had the usual teacher paper grading to do so Matthew told her to stay home and get all of that tended to. He knows that if she could be here she would be!

The day ended with a ltitle silliness in the form of listening to various versions of “Ali Ababwa” ( from Aladdin) in various languages including Norwegian. After that we watched the Voice and were very impressed by the guy who sang  a slightly rock version of “Tiny Dancer”.

All in all a very good day we couldn’t be more thankful for!!!

As always, we appreciate all your prayers and thoughtfulness and support. We can’t imagine getting through this without them.

Emma is Good Medicine!

Today was a day of rest. Yes it was the Lord’s Day but that is not the rest I mean. Today, rather, was a day of rest from chemo. After 4 days of his first Bone Marrow chemo they gave Matthew a day off. And, thank God, he felt as good today as he has felt the last 4 days. What more could you expect or hope for?
Despite not having chemo today Matthew did have some “good medicine”!

Sweet Emma visited today! She brought Matthew a memory book of their first year together which really made Matthew smile!

After they visited and then watched a movie it was time for Emma to head home. Matthew was one happy camper after this dose of Good Medicine!
Tomorrow is Matthew’s final chemo. It is only a single dose, rather than days of treatment, and will complete the wiping out of his bone marrow. We pray that Matthew will be able to handle this dose as well as the last batch. Then, after at least 24 hours, he will receive his own Stem Cells back and begin rebuilding his bone marrow. 

Thank you all for your prayers, thoughts, love and support!