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.