19 Feb 2007

To All,

Just a quick update to let you all know what is going on. As most of you are aware, the past weeks have really been event free. Twice a week Gene has been taking me to UW Madison clinic for Platelet transfusions with the occasional Whole Blood transfusion thrown in the mix.

I had asked you all to pray that my cell counts would start to increase and stabilize and this past week God has answered your prayers.

My platelet's are stabilizing in the double digits, for the most part between 10 - 13 thousand, still a long way from normal 160,000 - 370,000, but a major improvement for me!!!

I am down to only needing Red blood about every four weeks!!!

My white blood cells are in the 40,000 range where normal runs from as low as 38,000 to as high as 105,000. This is great.

Now comes the really tough part and I need your prayers for this one. Here goes, this past week I have been suffering from extreme abdominal pain (mostly my stomach), starting about Tuesday evening. I have experienced both vomiting and diarrhea, on Thursday the doctor was considering putting me in the hospital (she did give 2 1/2 liters of fluid), I said not to worry I will be better by Monday.

It has now been six days with the aforementioned symptoms and I am weak, my body is sore and dehydrated. My wonderful doctor has put me back in the hospital until I get stabilized and/or they figure out the cause. On Thursday they took enough various samples to confirm it was not viral. They believe it is the Graft Versus Host (GVH) disease that they had been hoping to see more of. They need to do an endoscopy and an colonoscopy to confirm. Once confirmed they will start me on some more medicine to clear it up.

One small problem, they can't perform the above procedures, so they say, until my platelets get up to at least 50 (or 50,000 - we just abbreviate). My platelets haven't been that high in over a year.

Please pray for guidance for the doctors.
Please pray that something will work out for them to perform their tests.
Pray that this hospital stay is SHORT!!!! I just want to be home.
Pray that Gene and the kids get along as Gene travels between home and the hospital.
My room phone number is (608) ###-#### and here room number is B6/###. We will update you as we know more.
God Bless and thank you for your much needed prayers.
Cheryl Cummins