June 3, 2009

Today we were so excited to hear that Bryce's bilirubin had dropped to 16 - now we are anxious to see what it will do in the next couple of days. Hopefully it will continue a downward trend. However, we are concerned that his white blood count has increased to 55,000. Fortunately his fever and chills have stopped the last 24 hours! They are doing a lot of cultures trying to determine where the infection is.

The dialysis last night really helped him to feel much better today. They did an ultrasound yesterday of his kidney and there are no obvious signs that he is in rejection, but only time will tell if it will bounce back and start working again. We are still hopeful for the kidney as well has Bryce surviving this cancer.

Today, Dr. Alonzo, the transplant surgeon, came in to see Bryce and discussed the possibility, if things deteriorated, the need to do abdominal surgery again. They suspect that the large hematoma in the abdomen may be the cause of the infection. We were all touched as Bryce humbly said to her in the face of this possibility - "I trust you". She remarked back to him - what our you trying to do make me cry. This becomes a lot more significant when you realize that everything they do to Bryce now is very traumatic for him. Any blood draws or IV sticks are traumatizing to him. (part of the problem is that his veins now are very hard to find and they usually have to poke him multiple times.) Usually they have been using his PIC line to draw blood, but it will need to be replaced real soon as it is becoming sluggish to draw blood now and is also a potential cause of infection.

Tomorrow will be five weeks since he was admitted and I think the length of the hospitalization has caused him to really need his family close by for support. He wants at least one of us nearby all of the time and when we say good-bye (even if another family member is staying) he pleads with you (again with his expressive eyes for us not to go). He continues to feel a lot of anxiousness.

The last five weeks have been filled with many emotions - times where we hang on to the smallest good news, great joy as we hear very positive news of improvement, touching - almost sacred moments we have spent with our son, times where we have wept uncontrollably as we have witnessed him suffer and have questioned whether he will survive; nevertheless, through all of this we humbly have not felt abandoned by the Lord - we still trust that He will do what is best for Bryce and know that He has a purpose in all things. We continue to pray that we will learn the lessons we need to learn from this experience.

Through these updates we have shared some very personal feelings, but have felt that it is the right thing to do so for those who geniunely care about our family and specifically our son, Bryce, and who offer up their faith and prayers in his behalf. Thank You!