Busy Week

This week was super tiring, but also filled with a lot of progress, so that’s good!
On Monday David met with the pain management doctor. He assessed David and decided to up the dosage of one of his medicines, he put an order in for physical and occupational therapy and he also suggested acupuncture for David. David is NOT a huge fan of needles and would never think of trying acupuncture before, but right now he’s willing to try just about anything. 🙂
Tuesday was a very early appointment for a brain MRI (for his radiation planning), an appointment with his neurosurgeon and in the afternoon, they were fitting him in for his therapy assessment. His staples came out and his neurosurgeon assessed him and was trying to figure out where his pain and weakness is coming from. He feels like we are missing a piece of the puzzle somewhere so he is ordering an MRI to be done of David’s lumbar plexus area so he can look at a group of nerves there. Hopefully that will give us some more answers and get us on a good path to healing/strengthening that. After that appointment, David was feeling extremely weak and sick. He started running a fever and we ended up cancelling his therapy appointment. David slept pretty much the rest of the day, while I waited to hear from his oncologist. His doctor believes his fever and overall feeling crummy is a side effect from his cancer meds. He told him to stop taking them (which he needed to do for his immunotherapy anyways) and then when he does start them back up in a week, he will only do half the dose.
Wednesday David was feeling a little better. He had his CT mapping and mask making for his brain radiation in the morning and then his appointment with his oncologist. The oncologist was very pleased that David has gained some weight, then he went through the main side effects to look for with the immunotherapy and then gave the green light to go to immunotherapy, so we went for that. We got there at 2 and didn’t leave until 7. During immunotherapy, David got some acupuncture and actually felt a little bit of relief so we are trying to set up another appointment for him for next week to get another treatment of acupuncture.
Thursday and Friday, David got a break from appointments, but a couple of the other family members had appointments, so our week was busy from start to end. David has shown some side effects from the immunotherapy, but nothing too serious, so we are extremely thankful for that! We are praying that the side effects are very minimal. It can be a bit stressful figuring out what is serious and what isn’t… We got an entire book of side effects to look for, so basically any change for David can be due to the immunotherapy.
Next week slows down a bit for us, thank goodness. Weeks like this last one really take a toll on everyone involved, so it will be nice to have a few days where there’s not too much going on. A couple of the kids have annual check ups next week at their doctor, and our sweet Ethan turns ONE on Monday! Where in the world did this last year go?! We are hoping this next week can be full of celebration, rest and good family time! David will potentially start his brain radiation towards the end of the week, but we will see when his Radiation Oncologist gets all the planning done.
Thank you for all the encouragement and prayers you continue to send our way! Please continue to bless us with them!

Prayer requests:
-For complete healing of David’s body
-For David’s pain to go away and his strength to return
-For the side effects from immunotherapy to continue to be minimal
-For discernment while figuring out what are concerning side effects and which are not
-For the immunotherapy to be extremely effective in fighting the cancer
-For this upcoming week to be joyful and refreshing
-For us to be able to find some sort of routine during the evenings that will make things run more smoothly
-For God to help our children through any difficult emotions or behaviors that they are dealing with