Pray for Chase's MRI and PET Scans

Chase is settling back in on the home front. He’s slowly working through the packages a bit at a time – it’s a bit overwhelming (thanks to all for the thoughtfulness)!. He has accumulated so many things that we’d like him to go through the rest of his stuff and gather up items to donate to the children who lost their things in the hurricane. Apparently, some of them have relocated to the Detroit area to start again and aren’t too far from us. Overall, he continues to be in great spirits, but certainly has his ups and downs. This is understandable, particularly since his doses of ANP are really getting up there – he’s now at 220 ml x 6 doses per day of #1 and 35 mll per dose on #2. That adds up to a lot of extra fluid pumping through his system, in addition to the average of 5-6 tall bottles of water that he drinks per day (2-3 during the night). We’ve got him set up with a urinal in his room, which makes things much easier and we’re investigating an easy to use catheter so he won’t even have to get up.

We had the first meeting with a visiting nurse this morning – of course, Chase is weary of anybody from the medical profession at this point and wasn’t too excited to meet her. He seemed to come around a bit by the end of the appointment and we’re hoping he’ll develop a relationship to trust her doing the IV bag changes, blood draws, handling the catheter needle changes, etc. (at least alternating days, which would provide a big relief to mom and dad). We’re also continuing to sift through the info we’ve received on local assistance with food preparers, recipe options, etc – trying to stay creative at getting our targeted doses of fresh veggies and fruits into his diet in ways he won’t have too much trouble with. Carol scored big today with a stuffed green pepper recipe that he loved (looked just like the Maltese recipe she used to prepare and he didn’t notice all of the substitutions, like soy for the meat). He happily gobbled it up and asked for seconds. This is the ongoing challenge – how to have him “eat it and like it”… we win some and lose some…

So tomorrow will be a big day with Chase’s new MRI and PET scans. We were able to work with the anesthesia department at Beaumont hospital to get them to coordinate in such a way that we could have Chase “under” for both tests and transferred between areas so that when he wakes up, it’s all over with in one painless swoop, along with having his catheter needle changed. This was a lot harder than it sounds, since these tests are conducted by different departments, who don’t use the same support staffs, and have never done it this way (we’re practically introducing these colleagues to each other, with such an “extraordinary request”, but it just seemed logical to us that these would be done at the same time since for each test he has to fast, undergo anesthesia, etc). Another ground-breaking area for us.

We’re really praying that Chase’s procedures will go smoothly tomorrow, that he won’t be too apprehensive going for another hospital visit, and most importantly we get a good indication that his treatment plan is starting to be effective. Although it’s early in the process, it’s never too soon for his miracle to begin unfolding….

We’ll be coaching him to dream about his angels watching over him during the several hour procedure and hoping that he isn’t too disoriented when he comes back – the last scan took him “out” for the rest of the day.

Thanks for all the support!

Love,John & Carol Sammut
Chase & Barbara Ann