Whit's Last Day for a While

Whit finished up his "summer school" at the speech clinic today. He really enjoyed his teacher this round and made significant strides in his speech. He'll probably do one more semester in this environment, and then we'll regroup and see what he needs afterward. It is a great blessing to see the progress he has made.

Now...onto the Paul update...as you know from my last post or two, he has had a lot of lower back pain. Trying to figure out its source and how to control it have monopolized a good bit of time. What I have learned more specifically is that the antibody has the potential to continue to irritate nerve endings in the back (or around the spine) and cause this kind of pain. Listed side-effects indicate that this pain usually goes away after infusion, but that it could continue on. I guess that is part of the clinical trial findings...exactly what are the toxicity effects of this antibody? We aren't necessarily seeing symptoms that would make us think that this pain is actually progressive disease, but that is always in the back of your mind. Since Paul doesn't seem to have complaints of pain in other known disease areas (upper back/shoulder, leg), it seems unlikely that he would have improvement (or stability) in those areas and progressive disease in another. So, we give it more time to see what will happen.

So that you don't think he is in constant misery, Motrin and Tylenol both seem to be helping more in the last day or so. Paul had a pretty good day yesterday. We even got in a round of Putt-Putt last night. We have only used the Morphine a time or two, and he has not had the terrible pain of Monday and Tuesday. Please continue to pray over these things.