A little stirring of the waters

I can finally give you a report on Glenn's appt. in G'ville Wednesday. I held off until we got all the test results.
His labs aren't any better over all. He continues to gradually decrease in his blood counts. He had a chest scan because of the nodes that were found six months ago before the stem cell transplant, and we got the results of that today: he has pneumonia, which explains the fever for the past two weeks. The Dr. there had already started him on antibiotics for the fever when we were there Wednesday, so it's a good thing. That Dr. called today to give us results of that and of some other labs. Basically, his kidneys are just not getting better but worse. His numbers are kind of a mystery so Dr. wants to do a bone marrow biopsy after Thanksgiving to see if the disease is any better. He is trying to find out why the kidneys aren't any better despite the chemo. The hope was that the chemo would put the disease in remission and we would see at least a halt in kidney damage, if not a little improvement. But that hasn't happened. So he and the nephrologist want to figure out what is causing the progressive kidney damage. They will also do other tests at the time we are there for the biopsy. The G'ville Dr. will also review the results of the kidney biopsies Glenn had a year ago and maybe consult with a nephrologist there at Shands about those. So we are stopping the chemo treatments and retesting and investigating to see what needs to be done next. Glenn will have a third week off of chemo while we do all this. Then there should be a new plan of treatment of some kind based on the new results and the reviewing of past results. The nephrologist doesn't want to do another kidney biopsy because Glenn has an increase risk of bleeding because of his blood counts being down. That's pretty much the info we have gotten. He says he feels ok, but then he will say he feels strange in a way he can't describe. And he is more tired than he wants to admit. We did a lot of walking when we were in G'ville, more than he has done in months. He seemed to tolerate it ok, but it really wore him out and made his leg muscles sore because he has lost so much muscle over the past several months from inactivity. So now we are in a state of waiting again.
We plan to have Thanksgiving with our daughter and her "significant other", (my term, not hers. I mostly  call him my big teddy bear.) I don't know if  either of our other two kids will be there but his mother will be there so we get to meet for the first time. Then Christmas will be here soon, then the new year, the n we move to ?????? who knows where. I'll definitely keep you  posted on that decision. It will be nice to know where we are headed. I won't have any new reports to give you next week unless something comes up, but I'll check in a time or two between now and when we go to G'ville for the biopsy/tests, just to let you know that nothing is happening. Enjoy your Thanksgiving week.