A Message from Mom

Well...I must admit that I'm the one who has been writing for Grant the past couple of months. Grant really wasn't up to it, but I wanted the blog to keep going. He hasn't been able to answer anyone's messages lately, but he does like getting them!
This past week has been the hardest week so far for Grant. The fluid in his head has caused all sorts of problems. The blood clot is also a big problem. His brain has been pushed towards the right side, and is pushing on his brain stem. We need the fluid to drain, and the clot to absorb into his system, so we can avoid another brain surgery. It will take several weeks for the blood to be absorbed, if it does, so all we can do is wait. If they remove the clot, they will also remove some of his brain cells, which is never good. It's near the temporal lobe which runs speech, language, memory and other things.
Right now Grant is not able to wake up easily. He's mostly just sleeping. It's almost like he's unconcious, but he does respond sometimes. He's fighting for his life right now, so please, everyone, keep praying & sending positive vibes his way. It hardly seems fair that he could beat 2 cancers, go through a bone marrow transplant (which still seems to be working) and end up with fluid & blood on his brain. He's the bravest person I have ever known. He is fighting, I can tell. No matter what, it's going to be a long recovery for him.
I, of course, am a mess. Either Matt or I are at his bedside at all times. My best friend Jeanine, and Grant's buddy, is also here helping us out. We all just love him so much and want him to get better. Thanks everyone for being there. Will post again as soon as I can.

Still here & fighting

No easy way to say that the bleed in my head was not so easy as predicted. I had a tube drilled into my head to drain the fluid from collecting next to my brain on Sunday. My headaches got worse, in fact, they were talking about taking off part of my skull and taking out the clot. With that comes too many complications, so we opted for the less invasive surgury.
So far, so good. Dont' know really. I've been back in ICU, but possibly getting out of there, back down to the 3rd floor today. That is if they have room. It's sometimes hard to get a room down there. Why is there so much cancer?
My mom and Jeanine have been taking good care of me. My dad is home from Alaska for extra time to help me get better. I miss him when he's gone, but he has to go fishing when it's time. Hopefully I'll get better soon, so he can go without worrying about me all the time.
I'm on day plus 110 from the bone marrow transplant. I thougth I would be better by now, but I guess this stuff that's b een happening is not related to that. My white blood cells are still high and I dont' have too m uch graft vs host desease.
Thanks to my Team in Training for all the support to my family. Some of them are running soon, like this weekend, in San diego. Good luck on a whole or half marathon. Wow, I wish I could run a marathon. Maybe someday.

My hospital stay never ends!

well.....I'm back in the hospital again. Since my last post, I got out last Sunday, was back in by Monday. I have a terrible, terrible headache and I'm sick all the time. I have a bleed in the head, probably from the blood thinner to disolve the blood clot in my leg. I've been having a lot of headaches, so there is something else going on, but nobody knows what it is. My kidneys are being stupid too. They are only working at about 50% right now, but they are getting better. All the drugs they give me are bad on the kidneys, so they've taken me off those, and are trying different ones. Will this ever end? It seems like I get all the side effects plus more that they didn't even think of.
At least I can finally think, and it doens't feel like my head will explode. It will take weeks for the blood to be absorbed into my body from my head, I hope that doesn't mean the headaches will last weeks too. It's getting discouraging, but I keep going, one day at a time.

It's been a long month

Well, I've been in & out of the hospital a few times since I last posted to the blog. I've been so so tired all the time. I got an infection twice, had a fever so I had to go back into Children's Hospital. I was there a week, got out for about a week, then back in again for a week. I only made it home for 2 days, before I had to get an ambulance from SCCA downtown to Children's again. I'm in ICU now because they found a big blood clot in my leg. It goes from my knee to my groin area. I had to have filter inserted through my neck, jugular vein, over the main vein, so that if the clot let go, it would not get to my lungs or heart. Now I'm getting medicine called TPA to try to disolve the clot. I'm going to get an ultrasound done later today to see if the clot is smaller. If it is not, then they will go in with a tube and try to put TPA right by the clot, which should dissolve it. I'm just glad they figured out why my leg hurt so much.
It feels like everything happens to me. I'm sick and tired of all this stupid treatment, and cancer in general.