Friday’s here but Sunday is Coming!

Friday, July 7 was an incredibly difficult day.

Garry’s blood pressure was critically low at 78/43. At that level there is not enough blood pressure to perfuse your organs to give them an adequate blood supply. Without adequate blood flow you can experience organ failure. There was a distinct possibility that Garry would be admitted to the ICU and this young female doctor said to us what do you want as far as end of life treatments? Garry replied to do whatever was necessary to maintain life as long as it didn’t leave him in a vegetative state.

They did begin to treat him with IV fluids, and corticosteroids, and that did help to raise the blood pressure to a slightly better level.
Later that afternoon, the head haematologist came to say that due to chemotherapy and all the other treatments for the lymphoma, they had caused his bone marrow to fail. At that point, they had been giving him injections of Grastofil, a treatment designed to increase your white cell counts(WBC). They began Grastofil treatments June 28, but had seen no improvement in the white cell counts. He also indicated that Garry’s red cells were being eaten by macrophages, causing him to have a low haemoglobin on top of everything else.
He said Garry had no capacity to fight off infection and his future was to live in a bubble, which he said would be very difficult, and that his life would be short as any infection would likely be fatal. As far as he was concerned, they had tried many things to boost the white cell counts, and that there was nothing more that could be done.
To say that we were devastated, would be an understatement.

A few minutes later, the head internal medicine physician came in to speak with us to see if we understood what the haematologist had told us.

He disagreed that there was nothing more that could be done and reassured us that they had not given up on Garry and would continue to give him Grastofil, immunoglobulins, antibiotic and anti fungal treatments along with special wound care.

At that point, I wondered if Garry’s sister Gail would make it here in time to see Garry before something terrible happened as she wasn’t arriving till Saturday evening.

I arrived at the hospital very early Saturday morning to find out that Garry’s WBC was 0.6 up from 0.2, that his blood pressure had risen to 111/53 and that his temperature was in the normal range.
His wound care now included acetic acid baths, which made a remarkable difference in a matter of one day. The organism, Pseudomonas aeruginosa that had caused septicemia, and was also found in his Perianal area was being treated with IV antibiotics, and seemed to be responding to treatment.

Garry seem to be a lot better than the previous two days but was still very critically ill.

And then Sunday arrived.

Dr. Kuldovich, the internal medicine physician arrived with wonderful news. Garry’s WBC was 1.3 and his ANC level was 0.42 up from a previous constant level of zero!

His blood pressure was 128/76 with a normal temperature of 36.4. 
This was an absolutely remarkable turnaround that he could not explain.
I said that Garry had experienced a miracle, and he agreed that that was a definite possibility.

Today Monday, July 10 Garry’s WBC is 4.4 and his ANC is 3!!!
These levels are nearing normal values and Garry has not seen these values since before the lymphoma diagnosis in 2018. 
Medically they can’t account for these radical differences. They plan on stopping the Grastofil to see if the WBC counts will be maintained.
We don’t know if they will do another bone marrow biopsy to see if they can figure out why all of a sudden the bone marrow is producing cells after saying on Friday that it was essentially dead.

Some of you might have wondered about my title of Friday’s here and Sunday is coming. Jesus died on Friday and He rose again on Sunday.

I truly believe Garry has been resurrected to new life and has a future in spite of being told there was no hope. We invite you to celebrate this incredible news with us as we continue our journey.

And that in spite of all we have gone through, we have known without doub that God has been with us, He is for us, that He loves us and He is the great physician who heals us. 

With so much thankfulness,
Shirley and Garry