Prayer Requests for This Week

Monday Jack is scheduled to begin the second phase of his chemotherapy (called “consolidation”). Actually, he was scheduled to begin the phase last week, but has been in the hospital fighting pneumonia since Tuesday. They drained almost a liter of fluid from his lung Thursday, and may drain some more tomorrow.

If they do drain his lung again, our prayer is that it would be effective and as pain-free as possible. The first time Jack had this procedure, it was extremely painful.

We also are praying that Jack would get to come home from the hospital tomorrow after his chemotherapy Monday.

Part of consolidation will be a spinal tap each of the next four weeks (starting Monday). Please pray that he will be headache-free afterwards.

Perhaps most significantly, we are praying that the consolidation phase would be effective, reducing his percentage of leukemic cells from 1.0% to 0.01% over the next couple of months. This would enable Jack to stay in the “intermediate risk” category. If this doesn’t occur in this next phase, he would move into the "very high risk" group, which would mean more complicated treatment that is also potentially more difficult and dangerous. The encouraging news is that the doctor is very hopeful that Jack will meet this goal, but we'd appreciate all the prayer support we can get!