Highlight: Infection Indicators Dropped again by 50% last night 

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When I came in this morning Marie told me that neither of them had slept more than 20 min at a stretch all night. Joseph continued to fill multiple nappies (diapers in the US) and have strong cramps. Seemed that anytime he would get relaxed and able to drift off  to sleep he would wake up with a major cramp. This has continued into the morning, a nurse has just given him some pain relief with the hopes that he will be able to sleep for a bit.

Joseph had an early breakfast of toast at 6:00 am as he is now fasting for a possible procedure in surgery this afternoon. He will have a semi-perminiate access line to his veins placed in his chest to make it safer and easier to do his chemotherapy. If there is a place on the schedule they will take him today, if not they will do this tomorrow.

The fact that they are installing this semi-permanent line is clear indication  that they feel the infection is “under control”. There will be a fresh set of infection marker test results this morning and if those continue to be low then they feel that Joseph will be ready to move into the main stream of the treatment schedule.

Right now if you were to look at Joseph he looks almost as he did a month ago. Red curly hair, rosy cheeks, a good appetite and very responsive. What a change from just a week ago when he was very pale, high fever, listless with a very swollen face – with an infection in his blood stream that could have killed him within a few days.  Today all his organ systems are functioning perfectly but this apparent good health is an illusion as he has no immune system and no ability to create new blood cells. His illusion of health is maintained by a special germ-free environment, round-the-clock attention by a team of highly-skilled professionals and thousands of prayers.

As I was driving to the hospital this morning I was thinking about how good my wee man looks now. If you were to go on outward appearances alone I would just walk into the hospital room and pick him and and take him home to play. But I can’t see into his bones, his inner-most being, where there is no life at all. It is a great picture of any of us. We can look great and be prospering, thoughtful & religious yet have no real life in our inner-most being. My son needs his cancer-filled bones to be regenerated with new life-giving bone marrow, each of us need our sin-filled hearts regenerated in Christ that we can become the children of God.

John 1: 12 – 13  But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.