Blessings & Prayer Requests

Mary & Greg welcomed a new grandchild on July 17!  Tenley Grace is my (Suzanne's) and Cory's new baby girl and we are celebrating this new blessing in our lives.  My mom is loving every minute of time she's spending with Tenley :)

Mom has kept busy this summer entertaining guests, having Amy's kids over to swim, and a visit from Adam, Bre, and their kids, Lane and Graysen.  All of her counts have been good and because of God's blessings, she's been feeling great.

She asks that you would lift up 2 friends of hers in prayer.  Chuck was diagnosed with AML a couple months ago and has had many battles since.  He is currently in ICU after his stem cell transplant because he has become very sick.  Please lift him and his family up to our God who is the Healer of all and the Hope we can trust in.  Please also pray for mom's friend Meridith who mom met in the hospital while going through the same rounds of treatment.  Meridith's AML has come back since her transplant and she's now taking medicine at home to battle the disease.

As always, thank you for all the love and support.

Summer time

Mom is doing really well these days.  She has lots of energy (to keep up with her kids and grand kids) and is over the worst of her cold and allergies.  Mom's doctor had to prescribe some new medicine last week because her graph's v host is acting up a bit in her liver.  The blood results this week show that the medicine is already helping.  It's nothing that they weren't expecting and is very manageable.

Other than that she's really enjoying her summer.  Amy's kids are over almost everyday to swim, Cory and I are staying at Mom and Dad's for a little while this summer, and David says he's never moving out :)  Obviously all of this gives my mom plenty to do.  Mom's trip to see Adam and Bre went great.  They had a really fun and eventful long weekend.  Mom also has been up to see Julie and Evan in Chicago many times over the past month.  It works out well that Julie's living in the city now since mom's up there for her appointments once in a while.  Any day now I'll be having my and Cory's first baby and that will just add to the excitement of my mom's busy summer.  Do you think she realized her job as a mother would keep her this busy even after we're all adults??

Thanks for your continued prayers, as always.  Mom feels the love from each of you.  God bless!

Doing well

Mom had an appointment again today in Chicago.  Her doctor was very happy with all her results from this week and always makes my mom feel so confident and happy with everything.  Her counts aren't exactly where normal levels should be, but it's normal in her situation since her body is still recuperating from everything.  Also, the more they lower her medicine, the more her body has to fight to get back to normal.  She's doing very well besides dealing with a head cold and allergies.  She's starting some antibiotics to fight them off.

Mom and Dad are heading out to see Adam, Bre, Lane, and Graysen in Pennsylvania tomorrow morning!  They're so excited to be heading out there and I know Adam and Bre love having them.  It should be such a fun weekend for them!

Further Testing

The hospital did further testing on mom's bone marrow and determined that she now has 100% of Joe's (the donor & Mary's brother) stem cells.  I don't talk about this very often on here but this is a really good thing because my mom's cells are no longer combating Joe's.  It always takes a while for this to happen, and we slowly saw the number come up, now all the way to 100%.  Because of this, they don't have to do any stem cell treatment.  We always like to hear that she doesn't have to go through additional procedures!

They also are happy with her platelet count this week.  It jumped up a few more points and this was good for the doctor to see.  It had been going down for a few weeks, the doctor believes due to graphs versus host because they are lowering her anti-rejection medication each week/month (if that's too specific, I'm sorry :).  All that to say, they're happy with where she's at and hope to see it continue to go up.

Now Mary and Greg are off for a fun weekend with all of Mary's siblings.  They try to do this once a year and always have a great time together!  It's great my mom can do this with no worries! :)

Clean Marrow

Hi everyone,
Mom's results came back clean on the bone marrow from last week, praise the Lord!  They see no signs of cancer and are still very happy with how she's doing.  They're running more tests on her bone marrow this week to determine exactly what to do with her medicine, which we should hear more about later this week.  They want to decrease her medicine as much as possible, as soon as possible, so that her imune system can build up to be strong enough to fight off disease in the future.

Waiting on Bone Marrow Results

Mom had her appointment at Northwestern yesterday and had a bone marrow done.  Her levels are all still looking good, they're just doing the bone marrow because it's been a while and they want to check things out at a closer view. 

Mom always gets a bit nervous to have the bone marrow done but it went very smooth and my dad was with to support her.  Now we await the results but probably won't hear until Monday. 

Please pray for my mom that she can trust in God's plan above her own, that she feels peace about her upcoming results, and that she remains healthy.  There will always be a part of her that's nervous to get these test results but I was reminding her last night of how good she feels and how great her results have been lately.  We will continue to trust in the Lord for our every need.

Who wants to hear more good news?

Mom had her appointment at Northwestern on Wednesday and found out her red count is now at 12.5!!  That's in the normal range (11-14)!!!  The doctor was very pleased about this and all is looking well :)  It must have taken a few weeks for the red cell treatment to kick in gear. 

Also many of Mom's medications are consistently being lowered in dosage.  She's down to almost nothing with her anti-rejection medicine so the doctor is confident that Joe's stem cells have now taken over mostly, if not all of mom's blood.  They're going to do a bone marrow next week to take a closer look at everything since it's been a couple months.  We're confident about it this time with her blood results coming back so positive.

Thank you for your continued prayers.

On a sad note, mom's hospital friend, Meridith, learned a couple weeks ago that her leukemia is back and she's now in the hospital going through treatment again.  This was extremely hard for my mom to hear but she was able to stop by and see Meridith after her appointment this week.  The reminder of the reality of cancer will always be around each of us, but we know our Lord has a plan for each person we know.  Please lift Meridith up today in your prayers and remember to live each day to the fullest as we don't know how many we have ahead of us.