Unbelievable News

CJ went in for surgery last week, Wednesday. He had a minor complication of losing a bit too much blood and spiked a post-op fever, but otherwise he did just fine. The doctors examined a smear under the microscope and felt certain the diagnosis would be a plasmacytoma tumor, which is cancerous. They put him on chemo that night while waiting for the results of the biopsy.

I went to visit him the next afternoon and he was already up walking around; a little shaky but walking on his own. They gave us a room to use for our visit and CJ decided to give me a little punishment. He went to a corner and curled up with his back to me. I think he was a little upset that I left him there! After awhile he warmed up and moved closer allowing me to pet him.

Friday morning he was given the clearance to go home so I picked him up that afternoon. If it weren't for the 8" incision on his back you wouldn't even know he just had spine surgery! It's amazing how fast they bounce back.

Now for the unbelievable news: Yesterday (Monday) afternoon I got the call about the biopsy - no signs of cancer!! What?!?!?! The neurologist now thinks it is an infection of the bone and surrounding soft tissue. We don't know exactly what kind of infection, but they did find some left over tissue and it's now being sent to the lab for culture.

Obviously we stopped giving him the chemo pills and we have to wean him off the Prednisone (it's an immuno suppresant so the body can't fight infections) right away. He's now on 2 different antibiotics, one of them aimed at bone infections.

What a roller coaster ride this has been - and not only are we still not out of the woods, but we don't even have a true and actual diagnosis based on positive test results yet. CJ still has spinal compression which is bad, so the road ahead is still long.

We are grateful that no cancer cells were found - so a HUGE THANK YOU to all of you out there praying for our boy. Keep them coming; we still have to fight whatever is in there.

Pray for CJ

It's been a long and difficult couple of weeks since my last post. A few days after that writing, CJ started having bright orange diarrhea every hour that changed to blood. He was on so many medications we had to make a chart to keep track of it all. About a week later that was cleared up. We still don't know exactly what caused it.

Last week CJ had an abdominal ultrasound to check for any tumors that may have spread to other organs or lymph nodes. Fortunately that came up clear. They also tested his urine for a particular protein that would tell us CJ had multiple myeloma - a type of tumor that is not aggressive and wouldn't require surgery. Unfortunately, that protein was not found.

Today CJ is going into surgery so they can biopsy the tumor and hopefully get as much out as possible, giving him some relief from the spinal cord compression. Please pray for CJ; best case scenario (though not likely) is that he has an infection of the bone instead of a tumor. Next best case is that it's a benign slow growing tumor. Let's put the power of prayer to work for CJ.

He will have to spend a few days in the hospital, but we are allowed to come visit him.