Another update....

I've been delinquent in the updates on my step brother Mike, sorry. I forget who I've talked to and where I've said what, but I don't mean to leave out my on-line friends and RL friends who might check here.

Anyway!!! Your prayers and thoughts are working!!! Mike has been out of ICU for a few days now and on a regular oncology floor. He still has one chest tube in and had a weird but interesting issue with his body leaching "chyle" or basically all the fat absorbed from his intestines out of the chest tube. He is therefore on a strict non-fat diet and less than thrilled with his hospital food I would imagine...still making good steps in the right direction. Another small set back if you will is that he developed swelling and phlebitis like symptoms in the arm he received the chemo in. The Vascualar doc said today that it IS a blood clot, but supposedly superficial enough not to be a threat to the blood stream. Surgery would have been necessary otherwise. I'm praying for any swelling and pain to go away quickly. Poor guy doesn't need anything else to make him miserable. Although it sounds like he had a nice visit with some friends tonight/yesterday and I'm sure that was good medicine for the soul as well.

I still have not been down to visit. I'm not sure when that will happen now. We briefly talked about Thanksgiving as a possibility for me and all my sisters and family but no official plans yet. Right now his white counts are doing alright but will likely take dips after every chemo. As the mom to two kids with frequent runny noses (that are usually nothing, but sometimes something), it does make me a tad cautious to visit. So thats the news for now. Mike and my parents have expressed great gratitude over the many thoughts and prayers and I am so thankful as well! I'll try to keep up with posting the news as it comes. For now we're hoping for mundane but steady progress...no more big scary things like having organs shut down in ICU or anything like that!!