The beginning...

Well, here's the beginning of a long road ahead!

First the history: For about the last 5 weeks or so, Corey has been having a lot of pain and swelling in his joints and had gradually gotten worse. He's also been having sever night sweats and chills at night. After about 2-3 weeks of this, we got him into the Dr. She did blood work and examined him and thought he had a possible bacterial arthritis infection or lead poisioning. She tested him for both and it only looked like the infection, so we started him on antibiotics. After 10 days of pills, we didn't notice a difference, only that things seemed to be getting worse with his ankles. This is where most of his pain seems to be. Since the pills didn't work, she decided that if he could handle giving himself shots or if I could do it (I tried really hard, just cried and couldn't. :( ) So he chose to give himself shots. She also suggested we go in for a chest x-ray just to make sure we're not missing anything. On Friday morning the report came back from the x-ray that wasn't to clear, so we were then sent for a CT Scan. We originally had that scheduled for this Friday 5/15. So after the 4th day of taking the shots, he still wasn't better, just staying the same/worse. So she sent us to the hospital. We sat in the ER on Monday 5/11 for 9 hours. It was long and grueling, but I'm glad we did. They decided to go ahead and do the CT Scan there. The preliminary results that we got back that same day suggested Corey had lymphoma. So we got into his PCP right away on Tuesday afternoon and he agreed, his lab work also suggested lymphoma.

SO...we are now on the long road of appointments and care. Tomorrow 5/15 we have the original CT Scan still, but now it's for his pelvic and abdomen area to see if there is lymphoma anywhere else other than the chest. The following Friday, 5/22 we'll be meeting with a pulminologist to do a breathing test, then a consultation to go over the CT Scan and schedule a biopsy. That might change if they find lymphoma in his other areas, but I'll keep you posted on that. After all this, we will see the oncologist and begin discussing treatments and hope to get all of our questions answered that we have. There are a TON of them!

We've created this to keep everyone updated on his health as his appointments happen and as things change. Thank you so much for all the support and prayers. We do read every email and listen to every voicemail, even if we don't respond, please know that it's all appreciated! You can always come to this if you have any questions about stuff going on. Thanks again!