Welcome to our blog!

Thanks for checking in! We will give updates on how things are going with our fight against multiple myeloma, a blood cancer, that keith was diagnosed with in march 2010. It will be an uphill battle, but one we will not lose.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Stem cells....

Ok, so keith was able to get his stem cells harvested yesterday. They took about 11 million or so! No more shots for him now! He hated those things. They caused lots of issues, but for now, we are done!
He came home yesterday and crashed. Slept all afternoon and most of the night. Woke up at 2am and had a fever of 101! Not good! He said he felt lousy, had a headache and his throat hurt. He did get up and eat and apparently that helped.
Hindsight, should have called UNC at 2am, but he wanted to see if eating would help. After calling this morning, they said, next time, CALL! No matter what time it is!
Going to monitor him for fever and call if it comes back. Hopefully it won't. Now we just wait.............something I am NOT good at!
In the meantime, he has to have pretty much no contact with anyone if he can help it. He has to wear a mask when he goes out of the house (to dr. visits, etc)

I will post later when we know what/when the next step is!
Thanks everyone!

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

stem cells getting harvested on thursday

Keith just called from UNC. His counts are as low as they can get. He cannot be around anyone, especially kids, for a few days. He is sad about that, but it is a good thing! Has to follow a strict diet to avoid all bacteria, no fresh fruits or veggies, everything has to be cooked well done.
Hopefully they will harvest his stem cells tomorrow! Then we wait.....

Monday, August 30, 2010

update

Keith is doing well, just tired, but that is to be expected. He went back to UNC today to get his labwork done. They said his numbers were looking good and if all continues to go well, he will be getting his stem cells extracted either wednesday or thursday or both. It will be outpatient, he will just be hooked up to a machine that is like a dialysis machine. It will basically filter out the stem cells and give them everything else back. They will then freeze them and then call us when they have a room open in the special unit he will be staying in. This could take 2-4 weeks. Keep us in your prayers! Ben starts school on Wednesday!! Hopefully this nightmare will be behind us soon and we can get back to normal....ok, we were never normal, but we will be happy to get back to whatever we were!
Hopefully we will get this all said and done and keith won't have to use too much disability, since unfortunately the Town of Cary doesn't allow people to donate time!
Thanks to everyone for their continued prayers and support! I will post again as things come up!