Its been a while since I posted any updates. Casey has been doing very well as far as his cancer goes. He has not had any side effects in about two weeks!! Which is awesome, but there's always got to be something!! I so wanted him to enjoy his Christmas break with the kids and our families...but about a week and a half ago, he started having some excruciating pain in his jaw. He waited a while to make sure it just wasnt a side effect of the chemo; but the pain just kept getting worse as the days progressed. So, he made an appointment with his doctor. It turns out that his wisdom teeth on top and bottom were impacted and coming in sideways!! Great! When will he ever catch a break?! He visited an oral surgeon for an evaluation and the Doc decided he needed oral surgery to remove the impacted wisdom teeth! Just wonderful! Even the smallest dental procedure is a major thing for a transplant patient. So he had to wait three days before he could have the surgery...poor thing had to endure pain for three more days... so that he could take an antibiotic before the surgery and must continue to take them after the surgery. His oral surgery was on Monday, Jan. 21st. Everything went well! Except for a few days later, the pain got worse!!! As if the poor thing hasn't been through enough!! They prescribed him some pain meds but not even two at a time would work! They would only make him loopy!! We had another interesting episode while watching TV together after having had taken some pain meds. He decided he wanted to get inside the TV!! He was interacting with the show Nip/Tuck! LOL! Thank God he didn't try to be a plastic surgeon and perform surgery on me!! Good times, good times!! ;o) The pain has lasted a whole week after the surgery so I made him call the doctor. He had an appointment today after his CT Scan at Baylor...I will get to that later! The doctor said that he did not have dry socket and everything looked good. But what he was doing at night and probably throughout the day during his naps was clenching his teeth. The pressure he was putting on the certain spots where the surgery took place was causing his pain. So they prescribed him some muscle relaxers. Can't wait to see how goofy those pills make him!
Now, back to the CT scan. His liver transplant surgeon needed to write to the Regional Board in order to get Casey higher up on the list for a liver transplant. A CT scan needed to be done so that the results could be submitted with the letter. The doc emailed me about an hour ago and said that his tumor/cancer looks better!!!! Thank God!!!! He said it looks smaller and has definitely not spread elsewhere!! He also informed me that he was granted 34 points on the MELD (Model for End-Stage Liver Disease) score.
For those of you who don't know...the lower the MELD score, the higher you are on the transplant list. When he got his transplant last year, he was at a 24 and that put him at the top of the list. He was alot worse off then, symptom-wise...so being at a 34 now is absolutely awesome!!! Please keep praying! Casey has been through so much already and he is so young! He has got so much to look forward to and is staying incredibly positive throughout all this!!
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