August 23, 2010 to September 1, 2010 Our Roller Coaster Ride

This has been one week that I wish I didn’t remember. On Monday, August 23, we began our second week of chemo in Wichita Falls. We were taking the IV chemo that we had taken several cycles before with the addition of an oral chemo called Temador. We thought Michael was tolerating it pretty well until we took diarrhea and vomiting on Monday, August 23, 2010. We were not feeling real well when we went to see our oncologist that morning and he authorized us to continue the chemo for the second week. Tuesday wasn’t too bad with the diarrhea and vomiting, but Tuesday evening things got pretty bad. Michael was sick all night Tuesday evening and was just a little scared and slept with me. We didn’t get but about 1 hour sleep that night. Talked about taking him to the emergency room in Olney that night, but decided we would be going to get chemo on Wednesday morning and we would make them aware of Michael’s sickness. The diarrhea got so bad, we had to stop at Target and buy clothes before we could go on to the cancer center.
Michael could not walk he was so week, so we wheeled him in to the center and he was immediately place in a bed. Counts were low on Monday, but extremely low Wednesday. When we saw the doctor he sent us directly to the hospital next door where Michael was admitted. They immediately started pumping his body with fluids to stop the diarrhea and vomiting, but had no success. By Thursday morning he was throwing up bile and his stool had some darkness to it. They called in a kidney doctor as his output was not good, and an infectious disease doctor. Ran some cultures on him, but was unable to determine any infection so they started him on a broad spectrum of antibiotics. Wednesday night he was given some phenergan IV injection and had an allergic reaction to it and he was so bad I didn’t know if he would make it or not. They called the doctor four times during the night because of his condition.
Saw our oncologist on Thursday and was told that another oncologist would see him on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday while he was away. Michael continued to lose ground through the weekend and on Sunday; the kidney doctor suggested we put him on dialysis as his kidney function was bad. At that point, I contacted Dr. Ravi, our oncologist at MD Anderson and he said to have one of the staff at the hospital in W.Falls get in touch with him immediately, which we did. They advised me we would have Michael transported to Houston on Monday which I agreed.
On Sunday afternoon, they transfused a unit of platelets to Michael and he had an allergic reaction to them and had whelps come up all over his body. His body was on fire and he was clawing like he had poison ivy. We finally got him calmed down and he slept most of the night due to so much Benadryl . This whole two weeks, he had not eaten solid food. He was getting weaker and weaker.
To make a long story short, he was transported by a medical airplane from Ok City and took him to Houston where his medical team met him at MD Anderson. He was placed in CCU where they observed him until Tuesday afternoon and they moved him to a private room. Had a pretty good afternoon on Tuesday and Tuesday night he started bleeding. They have give him numerous units of platelets and blood and the diarrhea has slowed down and the vomiting has stopped, but the kidney function is less than 10%. We will start dialysis on Thursday morning, and when his counts are high enough he will have some scopes done to see where the blood is originating. Hopefully when his platelets come up, the bleeding will stop.

God is so good and has performed another miracle in Michael’s life. Please continue to lift him up in prayer as we are going to get through this with God as our Great Physician.