Sorry there have not been any updates in a while. We finally arrived in Nashville on the 29th and they started testing on Jack the next day. He had a ridiculous amount of blood work done, a test on his heart, bone marrow biopsy, chest x-ray, and an EKG all in the first day. Poor guy! He didn’t have anything scheduled on Friday, but we did get to move in the apartment. It is a really nice apartment that is two bedrooms and two bathrooms located in the middle of Vanderbilt University. It was just updated a few weeks ago and is within walking distance of the hospital and several restaurants and stores.

Yesterday, November 4th, he had a PET scan done and we met with the nurse practitioner. We went over all of the test results that they have gotten back so far. All of his tests look great so far. They are still waiting on the PET scan and bone marrow biopsy, but hopefully will have the results tomorrow when we meet with the doctor. We also went over all of the chemo drugs they will be giving him and their side effects.

Tomorrow they are putting in his central line where they will give him all of his meds and we will visit with the doctor. They are admitting him on Friday, but are not starting his chemo until Monday. They like to have the patient come in a day early so they can get all the paper work together and chemo orders in the computer and checked. He will probably not have to stay in the hospital over the weekend. They will give him a pass and he can be “free” for a few more days. That will be good since Kim will be picking up Anna from Dad on Friday. Jack can then spend the weekend with Anna.

They are planning on giving him the donor bone marrow on the 17th. Please continue to pray for the donor who is 21 years old and has decided to actually donate bone marrow and not stem cells. The donor gets to choose how they want to donate they can either give stem cells where they filter their blood through a dialysis type machine and pull out the stem cells or they can donate actual bone marrow where they will go in a extract the marrow. Jack’s donor has chosen to actually have the marrow extracted. The risk for graft-versus host is much lower with actual bone marrow but the engrafting process takes longer so he will be at a higher risk for infection for a longer period of time.