Biopsy #4.

Sorry if this is too graphic!  Here is what they do in a biopsy.

We had a really quiet weekend.  Willie got two units of blood yesterday and since he had a reaction to the blood in the past, they now pre-medicate him with Benadryl.  This made him super tired so he spent most of Sunday sleeping. 
We were happy to learn today that his white blood cells doubled overnight!  They went from 0.2 to 0.4.  It is still ridiculously low by any standards, but we celebrate the smallest of improvements at this point!  His platelets have also come up and are now 53 and his red cells are 8.6 after the transfusion yesterday.  All in all, that is great news.  Now if he only wasn't so tired!
We met with the team this morning and continue to be entertained by our Rico Suave doctor who seems to be more interested in the status of his hair than anything else that may be going on.  He spent all of 3 minutes with us this morning.  There wasn't much to talk about anyway, he just reminded us that Will needs to have another bone marrow biopsy today and that Carl may or may not do it.
We waited out the morning with high hopes that Carl would be able to do the biopsy.  Around 2:30 PM Quan showed up.  She is the cute Asian doctor who was unable to drill into Willie's hip bone during his first biopsy at this hospital.  She is a good sport for letting us continually harass her about it so the moment she entered the room this afternoon she was met with more hazing.  We actually weren't joking when we said we hoped she wasn't there to do the biopsy, but she assured us she was just the messenger.  She reported that Carl was not at the hospital today or tomorrow, but she had scheduled Lance to do the biopsy for us.  She was quick to add that he is very strong and won a push up contest at a charity event last weekend! 
We were sold.  If it couldn't have Carl, we would at least settle for a guy who can push his own body weight!
Lance showed up about a half hour later looking anything but strong in a pair of blue medical scrubs.  He is tall and thin with limbs that seem to go on forever.  He has a friendly smile and a wild crop of dark hair that gives him a boyish quality.  He told us he has a friend that does competitive weight lifting which launched he and Will into a conversation that included terminology the rest didn't understand.  We laughed as they explained what it means to do a dead lift "sumo style" which I learned means to stand with your legs far apart while lifting the weight.  I think there is no better way to build trust with Willie than to throw out some weight lifting terms! 
We felt ate ease as he began the procedure.  He hasn't done very many biopsies so Quan was here to instruct and support and he was there for the muscle.  He numbed Willie up and began laying out the items he would need.  He was moving at a leisure pace and we could see that he was no Carl, but I had high hopes that he would pull through. 
He inserted the instrument and began drilling.  Now that I know what the sound of the metal rod drilling into the bone sounds like, I can't ignore it.  I gritted my teeth and watched Will's face carefully as the scratching sound told us Lance was making headway.  Will went into his "biopsy zone" and started his deep breathing.  The instrument went further and further into Will's hip, deeper than it has ever been drilled before, but Will seemed to be doing fine.  Lance removed the top piece and pulled out some of the bone marrow fluid with ease.  He handed it to the lab tech who put it in a petri dish and announced it was good.
I breathed a sigh of relief.  We were half way there.  The next step involves drilling the instrument a bit deeper and removing a piece of the bone.  Lance began drilling again and the metal rod disappeared further into Will's hip.  The rod is about 8" long and the most it has even been inserted in previous biopsies is half way.  My eyes must have been the size of saucers as I watched him drill it as far as it would go.  I imagined he must have speared all the way through his hip!  He flipped a lever on the device that slices a piece of the bone off, then removed the instrument. 
We all held our breath as he emptied the contents into a specimen dish that the lab tech was holding.  She swirled it around then frowned
"It's not enough" she said "I need another sample."
We all turned to look at Willie, trying to gauge his reaction.  He remained calm and zoned out.  Lance explained that he needed to go back in and Will nodded in consent.  This time he went straight down into the bone where the previous time he had been angled.  He drilled straight down and we both gritted our teeth as I noted that the device was not moving.  There are little lines all the way up the metal rod to help gauge how deep it has been drilled into the bone.  I watched the lines moving back and forth, but not getting any deeper into the bone.
He must had noticed me watching the lines because he looked up at me
"Anything?" he said
I nodded my head "no" then turned to Willie
"He's almost in," I reassured, "You're doing great!"
Sure, it was a blatant lie, but I had full faith that Lance would be able to get it in and Willie didn't need to know that we weren't anywhere near getting a sample.
Lance smiled at me and gathered his strength.  He had broken into a sweat and I watched as even his forearms began to glisten with sweat under the pressure.
"I see why you had trouble" he said to Quan and we all laughed.
"Did I forget to mention that Will has a metal hip?" I asked and we laughed again
"It feels like metal!" he replied, but he continued to drill.
Finally, the line on the rod began to disappear under the skin, and soon the next line began to enter.  We were getting somewhere!  Will began to feel some pain as he drilled a bit deeper, but he had to get a few more twists in to be sure.  He gave the rod a final twist, cut out a sample of the bone and removed the instrument.
The room was dead silent as we waited for the lab tech to see the sample.
"It's perfect!" she said, as we all exhaled in a loud mutual sigh of relief.
Willie did great!
Everyone offered praise and congratulations to Willie, but Willie, who is always so humble congratulated Lance.
"Is that the hardest biopsy you've ever done?" He asked Lance.
The answer was obvious by the way lance was leaning against the table, wiping his sweaty forehead with his sleeve.
"Oh yeah!" he said, with a little laugh "I've never done a biopsy like that. I can drill through most hips in a couple of turns, but not yours!"
The entire procedure took him 25 minutes.  Carl had done it in 10, but we decided that even though was wasn't as fast as Carl, he had still done a good job. 
It's nice to have another biopsy done.  I wish we knew how many biopsies Willie is going to need so we could cross them out as they happen.  One second thought, that may be a discouraging amount of biopsies to cross out! 
We will get the results from the biopsy later this week so we are asking for all of your prayers and positive thoughts that it will be good news!  We will pray that Will's counts will continue to rise and that we will be leaving here soon.
But if not...
I once heard a talk given on faith that keeps coming to my mind.  A story was told from Daniel chapter 3 in the bible in which the king of babylon builds a golden image and commands everyone to worship it.  There were three men who would not worship it because they put their faith in God.  The king was angry and said if they didn't worship the idol then he would throw them into a fiery furnace.  They responded by saying that they had faith that their God could deliver then from the flames, but if not, they would still not worship his idols.
What amazing faith that is!  They knew that God had the power to deliver then from the flames, but they also understood that it may not be in his plan to do that for them. 
In the story, the king threw them into the furnace and they did not burn.  He then had them pulled from the furnace and marveled that not a single hair of their heads was burned and they didn't even smell like smoke!
We are working every day to have that kind of faith that these three men had.  We know that if we are not delivered from our current furnace of leukemia flames that we will still put our faith in God.  We have our own agenda and desires for how we want this to go, but if not...
I think these are the three most powerful words that manifest faith.
I hope everyone else can find hope in this story as I have. 
Tonight we are relaxing and Will is resting after his biopsy.  We have high hopes for better labs tomorrow!
Have a wonderful night everyone!