Subject: Hurray---Nothing but GOOD news!

Monday night at 8:30 p.m.
Dear Friends and Family,

WOW! What a powerful group of believers we are!  Everyone of our prayers was
answered today!  We praise God for his blessings on us today.  We feel
ourselves embraced by the Holy Spirit.
Answered prayers:
*** No tears in the esophagus!  Scope showed irritation and a lot of redness.
A biopsy was taken.  Results will be back tomorrow.  Preliminary diagnosis is
that Brian has mucousitis (left over from last chemo treatment round) or
candida--a yeast infection or both.  They put him on antibiotics for the
possible yeast infection.
*** NO liver damage.  A sonagram today showed that his liver is functioning
just fine.
*** The rest of the tests came back with nothing but good news.

Since the cessation of chemo yesterday afternoon at 4:00 p.m., Brian has not
vomited.  In fact he is sitting up and playing with legos and doing puzzles--a
first in the hospital!  His face is a bit swollen, but he looks great.  He is
still on low doses of morphine that were started Sunday.  

They are weaning him off the morphine; encouraging him to eat----Today he ate
about 1/2 an apple, drank some juice, ate 4 fries and a little pasta.  He was
told if he started eating, he could go home--What an incentive!

He rode a tricycle to the playroom to play Bingo.  He was very spunky and
enjoyed visits from Rick and Sue Hahn, Rebecca, Grandpa Warne and Judy.  When
Garreth came on Sunday, Brian was too sick to enjoy the visit.  Today he kept
asking for him!  He was ready to play.  How blessed we felt to see this change
in such a short time!  

So if all goes well through the night, Brian will go home tomorrow afternoon!
Sara and I are so confident that this will happen that we cleaned all their
things out of Happy House--put it in the truck----and took a huge load of
personal belongings out of the hospital and sent them home with Stan tonight.
He will return tomorrow to take them home.

We are joyfully celebrating all this good news.  Brian missed 1 1/2 days of
chemo this round.  This will not be "made up".  He is now in recovery and can
go home until he gets fevers or pain or low blood counts.  All of these things
will definitely happen.  We just hope that Brian can be home for a few days.
5 Days would be remarkable but even 3 or 4 will be nice.  He has 2 more days
of chemo associated with this round later this month.  His chemo treatment
will continue as planned.  The powerful chemo drug--ARA C-- that probably
caused his problems over the weekend must be given to him again later.  The
doctors plan to give him more "rescue" medications to prevent him from
experiencing the severe vomiting.

Pray that Brian does indeed get to go home tomorrow for a few days.  Pray that
he is able to eat and enjoy some time with his friends.  Pray that Sara and
Stan get competent home-care nurses who can help make Brian's stay at a home a
good one.

Love,
Susan