A Light at the End of This Very Dark Tunnel is Starting to Show

So Matthew is doing a lot better today. His nurse said that his labs are looking good and that the dialysis is already doing wonders for his kidneys. He will be on a continuous dialysis for three days, and then he'll switch to a semi continuous dialysis until his kidneys are where the doctors want them to be. He will also be getting spinal taps to shoot chemo at the cancer in there twice a week until he is cancer free...that will probably be the worst for him. Now that the dialysis is working, the nurses can slowly start taking meds off of his med tower, and they think he should start waking up in a few days. He will finish this round of chemo either today or tomorrow, and then after that we are just waiting for his kidneys and the rest of his body to recover enough to go home. We're probably looking at about five more weeks in the hospital. He has a lot of mouth sores right now from the chemo, but those will start healing when chemo is over. This chemo is a lot harsher than the ones he has been getting since September, so we expect that he will start having the normal chemo reactions like vomiting,  mouth sores, loss of apetite, loss of energy, etc. Let's hope he proves us wrong though!

There are two nurses assigned to Matthew at all times because he is high priority. He has to be watched very closely because anything could happen at any moment. My parents love his nurses too. They take such good care of T and are visually compassionate towards him. They talk very sweetly to him and touch him very softly. My mom said that she can tell they love him by the way they treat him. His nurses ask to see pictures of him all the time. They like seeing pictures of when he was healthy and when he was healthier since being diagnosed with cancer. They can't get over how handsome he was and still is, and have asked my dad to bring pictures of him and hang them in the room. Having nurses like the ones we have now make experiences like this a lot better. It's also a huge comfort because we know that he is high priority to them not just because the chart says so, but because they really care about him.

After his surgery yesterday, he was really messy with blood and etc., so today they have cleaned him up really well and he looks really comfortable. Things are looking brighter today...let's hope it continues that way.

Just as a side note, I wanted to mention something incredible that has happened...Today there have already been over 400 views of this blog. These views are happening in various countries. Matthew literally has an army behind him. Thank you for reading and caring about my brother.

My aunt, Julie, was looking through her old wedding photos the other day and came across this picture of Matthew. He was so cute! It's fun to look back through old pictures.

On Sunday night, Matthew's prom date, Mackenzie, and her mom came to see him. They stayed for over an hour talking to my dad. It was cool because Mackenzie brought T her corsage, framed prom pictures and a card. That was really thoughtful of her because Matthew had lost his boutonniere at the dance. They left right before the ICU drama began.

This afternoon, the doctors figured out why Matthew is so sleepy. He has too much spinal fluid in his spinal cord, and it is putting pressure against the part of the brain that controls sleeping. This is bad because if they can't relieve the pressure he will have a stroke. However, this is good because it is an easy fix...well, it would have been if Matthew wasn't the patient. But of course he has to make everything way more difficult than it needs to be. To fix this pressure, they were going to put a drain from his spinal cord to his stomach, so that the fluid can continuously drain. However, when they went in to do the procedure today, they found that he was too swollen to put the drain in. So instead of the drain he is on some meds that should help the excess fluid drain. The dialysis should help this too, but we don't know how long that will take, and we need to fix him asap before he strokes. So now we are praying for the meds to work so he doesn't have a stroke. There is always something new to pray for.

T's dialysis machine until Thursday:

We got some really great news today! The doctors found that his spine is now cleared of cancer! So he just has to get two more spinal taps with chemo, and then he'll be done. Thank goodness! Also, my mom told me that he opened his eyes a little bit today. Only a crack, and just for a second, but he opened them. He also squeezed her hand a little when she told him to. It's nice of him to let us know he is still in there. I am very confident that Matthew is going to make a lot of progress in the next week. We've hit the bottom, and now the only place to go is up and up!

(This is my 100th post!)