Day by Day, Feeling Loved

   

    I just want to say how much I love you guys. As you can imagine, the last couple of weeks have been intense. There have been a lot of emotions, a lot of pain, a lot of stress, a lot of planning, a lot of talking to doctors, it’s all been A LOT. However, amidst all of the really hard stuff, there’s always been even more love, support, encouragement and hope. You all have loved on us like never before, all the while being respectful of our time as a family and allowing us to process things. We’ve had friends and family encourage our kids by driving by and dropping off things to make us smile. We’ve had friends put together a gaming party and had people send us games that we can play as a family. We’ve had treats delivered to us, phone calls, emails, messages, cards… the list goes on and on and we feel so incredibly loved. I wish I could hug each and every one of you and I wish I had the words to convey to you how much it means to us.    

I feel like the last couple of weeks have been so busy, that there should be a lot to update you on, but there was a lot of conversations of us working through possible prognosis, different avenues of treatments and things like that, so I guess I will just let you know where we are at right now. 

  David will be having his third immunotherapy infusion on Thursday. I’m very happy that he has tolerated his last infusion better than the first. We are praying that he tolerates the third even better. We’ve been told that it takes 3-4 immunotherapy infusions for it to start having an effect, so we are thankful that we are hitting that third treatment now.    

One of the tumors in his brain is located on his pineal gland. They are concerned that if it grows any more, it could block fluids from draining from his brain, so David will start the process of planning for another radiation session on his brain. The good news is that this one is a lot more targeted, so it should only be a couple of treatments and his side effects shouldn’t be nearly as severe as they were with his last brain radiation.  

  Last week David had an appointment with his pain management doctor. David has never been a huge fan of pain meds, and after the complications he had with them and being dehydrated, he asked if we could start lowering his dose of pain meds. So he has stepped down some of his meds and we can already tell a difference in his clarity and he is also having a lot less body tics, which was driving him crazy before. His pain is still manageable, so hopefully he can lower down even more within the next couple of weeks.

     Overall, David is feeling decent right now. He is regaining some strength. He had been using a walker pretty much exclusively since his last brain radiation sessions, but now he’s back to using his cane and even walking short distances without anything helping him. His energy level is also improving (as long as he doesn’t push himself too hard. Lol). He’s still tired pretty much all afternoon and most of the evening, but mornings are pretty good for him to get up and hang out with us.

      Thank you for all of your continued support. Like I said before, we feel so loved and it means so much to us.

Prayer requests:

-For complete healing of David’s body

-For David to continue to regain strength and energy

-For the immunotherapy to start having an effect on the cancer -For continued hope and peace from God

-For our children and all the big emotions they are having to face right now and for all the other challenges they are dealing with

I will try to continue to update for all of you as much as possible, because I know you are all invested in David and our family as well. We love you!