First Entry

Dear Family and Friends,

This is the first entry of my blog to keep everyone up to date on Bob and how he's doing. I guess I should start from the beginning and let everyone know what has happened thus far. As most of you know Bob and I went with his friends Dave and Traci on vacation to celebrate his 39th birthday this past week. A few days before the trip, Bob was complaining of stomach pain and I wasn't feeling well myself so we thought we had both picked up a bug of some sort. We started on vacation and I was feeling better, but Bob was feeling much worse. So for the first 2 days of the trip Bob stayed in the room. The next few days Bob was actually feeling better, so much so that he went scuba diving with me in Honduras, and went and climbed the Mayan ruins with Dave, Traci and I in Belize. Unfortunately, he started to feel worse again, so much so that when our vacation ended Sunday (on Father's Day) I persuaded Bob to go to the walk in clinic near our house to see a doctor because he hurt all over. The doctor there had concerns that his stomach was so tender and did a test to determine if Bob was bleeding internally. It came back positive and I rushed him to Bethesda Memorial Hospital in Boynton Beach. Thank god the emergency room people were very quick to act. They told me that they were surprised Bob was still walking with all the blood he lost. They had to drain blood from his stomach and immediately started a blood transfusion. He needed 6 pints of blood initally (the average person has 8-12 pints of blood in their whole body... just to give you an idea of how much he lost!). We spent the night in the emergency room, and on Monday morning they transferred him to the intensive care unit. They needed to get him stable before they could perform the remaining colonoscopy and upper GI endoscopy on him Tuesday. In the meanwhile, they decided to perform a million tests to try to figure out where he was losing blood from (he needed an additional 3 pints of blood Monday night). He was tested for everything from Swine Flu to bacterial infections, they decided to include a bone marrow aspiration as well since they found enlarged lymph nodes in his stomach. The colonoscopy was normal and the upper GI showed a few ulcers. His blood was starting to maintain itself on Tuesday night, so we hoped for the best and I went to work Wednesday morning. Unfortunately, while I was at work the oncologist came by the ICU and informed Bob of the bad news. Preliminary test results from the bone marrow aspiration showed that he has Leukemia. Acute Myeloid Leukemia to be exact. The exact same cancer that his mom has believe it or not. So Wednesday morning they moved Bob to the Cancer center at the hospital and will start chemotherapy first thing in the morning. I have been getting lots of emails from people wanting to come visit Bob. Unfortunately, his immune system right now is pretty much shot to hell due to the blood loss, so he is living in a sterile environment right now, masks and everything. Chemo starts tomorrow and lasts for 7 days so I'll be writing more soon.

I'd just like to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the support, love and prayers that everyone has given Bob. It really means a lot to him. I am especially grateful to Dave, Jim, and Alwyn from elitefts.com, all his powerlifting buddies, his co-workers and all of our family and friends. He won't be able to check his email much starting tomorrow so we've decided that I'm going to try to read to him all the comments that people make here on the blog for him. So keep the comments and support coming!

~Michele