Hello all!
First of all, thank you for reading these reports and any good thoughts you can send our way. This ALWAYS helps! I am so thankful for you all and the language of love that connects us all.
Healthwise, Michael has continued along with his digestive system struggling. Hah! I can say that we have talked to our Primary Care Physician again and she has called in a prescription for very expensive porcine pancreatic enzymes that might help, if taken each time he eats. If that doesn’t work, we can try a bile sequestrant. This is to help even out the bile flow. If there are dumps of bile into the digestive tract, this can cause gut pain too. These same meds are also used to absorb excess bile floating in the body that can cause bilirubin and itching to increase. The GI doctor has ordered a stool test to see what is really going on, but that all takes time. We will be experimenting to see if anything helps.
Another development is that the company, Renew, where we were getting drain exchanges locally is going out of business! So, they have ordered one last exchange for Michael on Friday 9/27. That is 2 months from the last change. We can often wait 3 months, but the last two exchanges have only been 2 months apart. It seems like a change is needed anyway since the left side drain is showing signs of at least being partially blocked.
A fun thing is, tomorrow (Sunday) we plan to go to a meeting in Portland put on by Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation CCF, for caretakers and patients who have been dealing with the same cancer Michael is said to have. They provide lunch for us and there will be a couple of informational talks. My mentor and her husband have organized it. I am excited to meet my mentor in person! She has been a real help to me!
Prayer points:
Learn a lot at the meeting in Portland.
A healing and help for Michael’s digestive system
And for me- to be able to live steadily in God’s love and not be moved (read: freaked-out) by circumstantial ups and downs in Michael’s health. (hmm that is a good one for all of us, right?)
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