Thank God for Jodi’s intuition that the earlier Dr. Filipovich could see JT this week, the better. When I spoke with her over lunch, she and JT were heading through Columbus and she was feeling a strong sense of peace about making the long trip. Then JT’s nurse coordinator got in touch with troubling news: his blood culture last week has grown out a bacterial infection. The coordinator kindly wanted to give Jodi an opportunity to process what this means during the remaining drive time before she got hit with it upon arrival. It means a minimum week-long stay on the BMT inpatient floor, heavy-hitting IV antibiotics, etc.

Dr. Filipovich’s working hypothesis is that his port (central line) is infected. At this point in the evening he’s already received antibiotic infusions and they pulled a bunch of blood for testing:  the next three days will give us a much better idea of what we’re up against. I guess that there are ways to treat an infected port but often they simply pull it out if it’s gone bad. I don’t know what they will use then for IV access.

And there’s still the major GVHD development as well. Dr. Filipovich shares our concern about his skin. She thought it looked better on his hands and legs but agreed that his arms look worse. And here’s the thing – now that he has positive blood cultures there’s no way they can do surgery to put in the central line he’ll need for the light therapy to stop the GVHD and hopefully heal some of the damage. She told Jodi that she wanted a day or two to see what his test results look like but she’s planning to prescribe a drug that will completely wipe out all of his B-cells. These are the immune system cells he’s worked so hard to grow over the last 14 months and that we were all so thrilled to see coming back. Once they’re gone he’s committed to being on IVIG or subcutaneous IG for a long, long time because it will be a long time before we see more B-cells again. But we have to get this GVHD stopped, especially since the damage can be irreversible.

When I last spoke with Jodi they were getting ready to move from their room in the Clinic over to the BMT floor. They’re both going to have to make the transition to hospital life and that’s never easy, especially since JT is older and stronger and as Jodi says, “more full of the business.” But she also expressed relief that he’s there with the experts being monitored closely and getting the treatment he needs.

So our boy needs your fervent prayers tonight and this week. We’re obviously disappointed and sad and part of me simply has a hard time believing it. Three weeks ago I thought we were on the long slow climb out, perhaps not a quick journey but one getting progressively better. Now GVHD and a blood infection, just not at all what we’d hoped for, nothing we saw coming at all. Jodi and JT are in the hospital, Justy is with my parents, and the house seems awfully empty.

But I read in the Psalms tonight that God rescues the helpless and there’s nothing like this sort of news to illustrate how helpless we really are. We know that our son will be healed completely in the Kingdom and we continue to hope and pray for healing here and now as well. Thanks for being in this together with us.