Nothing New....

Some of you may have seen a Facebook post or heard some news about Matthew bleeding and a low platelet count.  Fortunately, it turns out that both of those are a problem. 

Matthew started bleeding from his stoma on Sunday evening.  The stoma is a result of the colectomy Matthew had last May.  My Dad took him to the emergency room because of the fear of excessive bleeding as a result of his low platelet count.  The bleed stopped, and they did scans to check for internal bleeding, which came back negative.  However, they told Matthew that his platelet count was a 20--which is extremely low.

A couple days later Matthew went to the oncologist. The oncologist tested his blood and found that his platelet count was in the 60's.  His thoughts were that they did not test Matthew's blood quickly enough, and his platelet clotting occurred causing the count to be inaccurate.  He sent him to LabCorp for another count (immediately after testing it in the office) to test his theory.  The blood count from LabCorp came back as too low to count.  This confirmed his theory that the hospital's count was inaccurate.  He also told Matthew that bleeding from the stoma was very common (which nobody had mentioned before). 

Therefore, despite the scare.  Matthew is still in the same place he was in last week.  His counts haven't gone up yet, but the doctor doesn't seem concerned.  So, we just hope that he needs more time.  The next step at this point is scheduling his colon resection.  This is not on the books yet, but they are hoping for the end of April. 

Thanks for the continued thoughts and prayers.

Remission!!!

Matthew's scans were clean!  They saw no cancer!  His platelet count was still low (74), but hopefully, with time, they will gain some more ground.  He will go back in 3 months for another set of scans.  He still needs to go through his resection surgery.

For now though, we are relieve, and thankful......

Happy Dance--at least a small one!

We can do a little happy dance this week.  Matthew's platelet count went up to 74 --all on its own!

  This doesn't change the fact that chemo has been discontinued.  However, we were a bit concerned that the marrow may have been permanently damaged.  So, this is excellent news.

They also had a meeting with the surgeon that will do his resection.  The doctor basically said that he wouldn't do surgery if there was still cancer present.  So, the next step is appointments at M.D. Anderson.

These were already in the works, but it has taken a while to get them all straight.  Mom has gone back and forth with them on scheduling things in the right time frame (and right order) several times.  March 22nd Matthew will have his next round of scans at M.D.A.  These (Hopefully and with lots of prayers) should show that all the cancer is gone.  He will get the results from the scans with the M.D.A. oncologist on March 23rd.  He will have a follow-up with the liver surgeon on April 2nd (he has to have several meetings a year with the surgeon).

So, in short, the prayers --and time--are working so far.  Please keep them up  They are much appreciated.