May 7, 2009

To My Dear Friends in the Stake:

Here is the latest on our son, Bryce. Many of you have asked if it is okay to share this information with others. We feel fine about you sharing this information with others in the stake who may be interested. We are grateful for the concern and love we feel from members of our stake and are thankful for all of the prayers for our son.

We feel such a depth of gratitude to the Lord for His tender mercies in our son's life. Although he has a very long ways to go we continue to see daily improvements with our son. We will take any positive signs we can get in his healing process.

Yesterday he got up to 235 lbs - 87 lbs of excess fluids. He is on dialysis around the clock and through this they were able to pull off about 33 lbs of excess fluid and so today he was down to 202 lbs, which is still an extra 54 lbs of water weight. Today the stopped taking additional fluids off him beyond the fluids they are giving him - this is important to maintain his blood pressure. It has been so very difficult to see him look so poor that we can't tell you how wonderful it is for us to see his appearance improve!

For the most part the doctors are very pleased with how well he has responded – I think much better than they expected. His doctor today told us that the dialysis is working extremely well for Bryce. He said this doesn’t always happen – for example, he said that sometimes they have patients waiting for a liver transplant and the dialysis hasn’t worked very well for them compared to how it has worked for Bryce. They are hopeful that possibly his liver is starting to respond a little, but they are unsure at this point.

Bryce has always liked to wear socks - he doesn't like to go around in bare feet. So yesterday I bought him some "King size" white ankle socks to cover his feet. He seemed to respond positively to this.

We are encouraged also by the fact that his lactic acid level has continued to decrease - it went from a high of 30 a few days ago to only 2 this morning.
He is still on a ventilator – mainly to keep his airway open just in case, but he is doing most of the breathing on his own. He has been getting more agitated as they have reduced some of his sedation, but he is still quite sedated to keep him comfortable – particularly with the endotracheal tube in his throat as it makes him feel like he is gagging.

His white blood count has dropped to very low levels – probably due to the chemotherapy - and they expect it to continue to drop. They have cautioned us about the serious risk Bryce is in of easily developing an additional infection or illness because he really has zero immune system at this time. We have been asked to greatly reduce the number of family members who can visit him to reduce this risk.

He continues to need lots of blood products – packed red blood cells and platelets. This could be due to the dialysis,poor liver function and the chemotherapy.
We continue to have hope that the chemotherapy will destroy the cancer, but do not have any clear indications whether it is working yet - hopefully in the next few days we will know.

They have warned us that if they can eradicate this cancer that it often will come back - sometimes within a few months, which obviously is very concerning to us. His transplanted kidney appears not to be working at all right now, but it is possible that it can bounce back after his liver function improves.

We understand the realities of his condition and recognize that this will be a very long and difficult recovery if he survives, but we have great hope in the Lord knowing that if it is His will that He can do ALL things!

We also know that your faith and prayers are making a positive difference for Bryce. Thank you for all that you are doing for Bryce and our family!

Love,
Ken and Kendra