Say a Little Prayer
I’ve kept something to myself for quite a few weeks now. Anyone who has ever met me knows that is very unlike me. I don’t know if I just haven’t wanted to face the situation at hand or just can’t process the information, but here goes… My little brother might have cancer.
Some people know that while he was in “the big house” he was diagnosed with Heppatitus. Don’t ask me which one.. B or C, I get them all confused when it comes to the hepp. He couldn’t start treatment because it’s a year long treatment and he was only in for 9 months and the state won’t start something it can’t finish. After he was released, he began treatment which has been very successful and the doctors thought he had very good chances given his age and physical condition to go into complete remission.
A few weeks ago he went for one of his doctor’s visits, a very normal occurance and found out some good news… there were no traces of Heppatitus C in his blood (I’m just going to assume this is what he was diagnosed with, but I could be wrong). The bad news? His platelets were at dangerously-life-threatening-low levels. The healthy person has approximately 150,000 platelets in their blood. Brad was down to 14,000. The doctors were actually kind of impressed that he wasn’t spewing blood out of ever orifice of his body. At that point they were most likely leaning towards the lack of platelets being caused by his medication but threw out the possibility that it could be cancer.
They began treatment and his platelets slowly climbed up to about 25,000. His doctor’s visit earlier this week revealed that he was up to 36,000, which takes him out of the life-threatening range. However, when he went back to the doctor today he was down to 34,000. While it is an improvement from his first stage, a drop in platelet levels is not supposed to happen on this treatment and usually a drop in platelet levels means cancer.
The game plan is for him to go back to the doctor in a week where they will check his platelet levels again. If they are down, then they will immediately do a bone marrow biopsy to find out WHERE the cancer is (notice not IF he has it). If the levels are up, then they will wait another week and will still proceed with a bone marrow biopsy just in case.
So, if you could say a little prayer for my little brother, it would be ever so much appreciated.
