Christmas With Cancer

On Monday of this week, Michael completed his final chemo of delayed intensification. According to doctors, Michael is through the worst of his chemo at this point. However, his body will be experiencing its effects, likely for several more days. Over the last two weeks, Michael has had to have two transfusions of platelets and one regular transfusion. A normal platelet count is 150-400. On Monday, December 15th, Michael’s platelet count was at 7. He received platelets that day and again on Thursday, the 18th. This past Monday, Michael’s hemoglobin was at 7.7. Hemoglobin is the red blood cells responsible for transporting oxygen to the body. Typically Michael gets a transfusion when his hemoglobin drops below 7, but to get us through the week of Christmas without having to make a return visit to Ann Arbor, He was given a regular transfusion.

Throughout delayed intensification, Michael’s ANC had stayed abnormally strong (at least for a leukemia patient) …until the last two weeks. As the cumulative effects of the previous seven weeks of chemo took their effect, Michael’s ANC dropped from 1500 (very strong for him) on December 15th to 100 on December 22nd. A person with an ANC under 1000 is considered immunocompromised, and a person with an ANC under 500 is considered neutropenic which means that one’s immune system is dangerously compromised. Michael was immediately put on two antibiotics, and Sarah and I were forced to adjust our Christmas plans accordingly.

This Christmas, all of the out of town siblings on both sides of our family flew in for a visit, and everyone wanted to see us. While Sarah’s sisters stayed with her parents, and my sister and her family stayed with my parents, either Sarah, or I, or both of us were on the road every single day this past week going to and from family gatherings. We tried to take as many precautions with Michael as possible and consequently had to cancel plans with all of the cousins on the Reece side.

Sarah and the kids spent time with her family on Monday while I had dinner at my parent’s house with them and my sister and her family. Tuesday, I drove to my in-law’s house after work for dinner with Sarah’s side of the family. Wednesday, they joined us for our Christmas Eve service and then for a steak dinner at our house (a tradition from Sarah’s family that I gladly adopted when we got married). After everyone left and the kids were in bed, Sarah and I got all the presents under the tree and the kids stockings stuffed and put out in the living room.

Christmas morning is always a special time in our house. Sarah and I were up at 6:30 AM to enjoy a few moments of quiet and a cup of coffee and to prep for when the kids would come charging down the stairs at 7:00AM.

After stockings were opened, we took a few moments to read the Christmas story from Luke 2 before we prayed thanking God for sending Jesus to die on the cross to save us from our sins. The rest of the morning was spent opening presents, eating a wonderful breakfast that Sarah made, cleaning up all of the wrapping paper and boxes, and getting ready to head to Owosso for Christmas with Sarah’s family. We had a great time together with Sarah’s family on Christmas afternoon and evening before heading home and getting to bed late that night. The plan was to sleep in a little bit, before heading to my parents’ house for lunch to celebrate Christmas with them and my sisters’ family.

At approximately 3:00 AM on Friday morning, Sarah was awakened to cries for help coming from the boy’s room. Our boys have a bunk bed with the lower bunk that Michael sleeps in being much wider than the top bunk. Our second son, who sleeps on the top bunk, got sick and vomited over the side of his bed onto Michael’s bed below. Sarah woke me up, and we spent the next thirty minutes cleaning up the mess in the boy’s room. Michael relocated to the couch in the living room for the remainder of the night.

With this new development, the decision was made for Sarah and our second son to stay home, while I took the other three kids to my parents for our Christmas with them. We had a great time together with my parents and my sister’s family on Friday afternoon.

On Saturday, Sarah and the girls joined my mom, sisters, sister-in-law, and nieces for brunch at Uptown Grill in Bay City. This has become a tradition that my mom likes to organize when all of the family is in town. On Friday, I was tasked with planning what the boys, my brother-in-law and my dad would do that morning. Without thinking things through thoroughly, I made plans for us to go to Cabela’s in Saginaw and then Culvers for lunch. The problem is that I could not take Michael to either place because of his low ANC, and that reality didn’t dawn on me until shortly before we were supposed to leave on Saturday morning. Michael stayed home while the rest of us were out. I apologized to him, and he took things much better than I would have at his age. It is so hard at times having to constantly adjust plans depending on what is going on with his health, and I dropped the ball this time.

Saturday evening, my parents and sister and her family came over for pizza at our house. Once again, we enjoyed a great time of food and fellowship until it got pretty late. My sister and her family joined us for the Morning Service at our church today, and it was great to see them for one final time before they head back out of state later this evening. All in all, it’s been a crazy-busy, wonderful, difficult at times, whirlwind of a week.

On a positive note, I got news on Monday that the insurance company finally signed off on the additional MRI on my back. That is scheduled to take place in a few weeks. The other huge blessing is that, even with Michael’s ANC so low, he has managed to stay healthy this week. That truly is the protective hand of God at work on his behalf. As always, I am so incredibly grateful to God for sending Jesus to die on the cross to pay the price for my sins. Jesus truly is the reason for the season.