|
Warren Mattox's health updates 
Nathan Mattox May 2008 (Nathan our youngest boy)
Welcome to Warren's Web Page
Warren Mattox had Burkitt's Lymphoma. Clear after-chemo scans so far!!!!
Please read the Journal History and sign the Guestbook.
This is a place to find out how Warren is doing and what needs the most prayer now. Please do pray about the things that you read about. Thank you for taking the time to come by. You may share this web site with anyone else who is interested.
How it all began:
We went to the beach as a family on March 6th, 2005. Everyone got sick while we were there, Warren the least. He was a little tired and had a small cough. (The next week was when the cancer started, but of course, we didn't know it then.) Warren was more tired every day, until finally, he would lie on the couch all day. I just thought it was the flu. Funny thing, though- he had no fever with it. During this time, his tooth was also hurting, and his regular dentist referred him to a root canal specialist, because something seemed to be happening that deep, but he wasn't sure if it was big enough to do anything about. So we thought maybe it was the tooth infection holding him down. Then for about three days, he complained of pain in his right arm, which was better after a hot shower. Then his arm was feeling better, but his cough was worse, and I could hear him wheeze when he got up to use the bathroom, yell at his brothers ( it's like he had to get his adrenaline up to be able to have enough energy to get up, and of course he was cranky too), and then lie down again. Friday night, April 9th, he vomited dark blood, so I took him to emergency at Portland Adventist (8 pm). They thought the bleeding was from him taking ibuprofen for a week. They said he had pneumonia in one lung and also a lot of fluid around the outside of the lung, which sometimes could be a sign of a tumor, etc. I didn't take the tumor part seriously, because the doctor was being such a jerk to me ( ever since he heard that we didn't do immunizations), so I wrote him off as just trying to shock me, like when he said he'd have to put a scope up Warren and down his throat to see where he was bleeding from, and to prepare myself. Also, he said that Warren's kidneys were almost all the way shut down (10% function), so they would have to transfer us to Emanuel, where there was a Pediatric specialist ( thank God!). We had to go in the ambulance so they could start hydration right away (5:30 am). Emmanuel never did anything about the bleeding ( it fixed itself), they were worried about bigger things, but they didn't tell us that yet. They put us into a regular room for observation and put him on antibiotics for the infection. The next day, his kidneys took a turn for the worse, and they put him into the ICU. On Monday, they told us they were looking for a tumor or something, and they found it, growing through the diaphram from the liver, pressing on the lung and causing the pneumonia. Then they found more tumors, through his kidneys and even into the center of his heart. Tuesday they went through his belly button and got a biopsy of the tumor, and sid it looked like it was a lymphoma, and Wednesday they knew which one: Burkitt's lymphoma (pre- B lymphocyte, small, non-cleaved cell), an extremely aggressive type of cancer that typically kills in 4 weeks. Warren had had it for 3 weeks, and it was stage 4.( I'm so glad we didn't bring him to the regular doctor, who would have put us on antibiotics and sent us home for another week.) They told us to expect 6 months of treatment, then changed it to 1 year, when they saw how far it had spread. So I went from "okay, 6 months, we'll be done before baby's born, I can handle this", to "I'll have to bring the baby to the hospital for a few months?" Then I stopped thinking of myself when I heard them say, " We have to start chemo tomorrow (chemo- think "poison"-is a big deal for any mom to think of giving to her child, but coming from a natural medicine standpoint, where I hardly ever gave the kids Tylenol, and avoided antibiotics, it was a huge deal), we already put in the Hickman line, the dialysis line, and a line to drain the fluid off the lung (it kept building up quickly)." They had to start with smaller chemo than recommended, because of his non-functioning kidneys. So they did a methotrexate LP and bone marrow biopsy on Wednesday, and started steroids to shrink the tumors, but not too quickly, or the dead tumor material would overwhelm his kidneys (it grows quickly, but also dies quickly). Dialysis continued for a few days, and, with our whole church and everyone they knew praying, his kidneys improved faster than they expected, and they started real chemo a week later, very aggressive chemo. He was in the hospital for a month with extremely bad mouth sores and side effects, which were so painful they hooked him up to a pain pump, and he could push the button when he needed more. He hardly ate at all, and when he finally went home, it was attached to a bag of TPN (IV nutrition). We were scheduled to start chemo again a week later, but his counts took a while to come up, like all the times he had the aggressive chemo.The maintenance rounds were a piece of cake in comparison. He finished chemo in December (he had less infections and set-backs than they expected),and his one-month-after-chemo scans were clear. So now we wait and watch. And live life. And thank God for extending his life.
Journal
Saturday, May 3, 2008 23:00 AM PDT What a day can bring. Baby Nathan Cole Mattox was born May 3, 2008. He was 8 pounds 7.5 oz. Our biggest baby so far. He was born through cesarean section. Tamra work me up around midnight. She was in early labor. So I picked up her mom to watch our other children while we were gone to the hospital. At the hospital they put Tamra on a monitor to see if she was in labor or not and after about an hour and a half they decided that she was in labor. Through the wee hours of the morning they kept checking her to see how far along she was and she made good progress from about 4 cm to 7 cm at around 7 am. Around that point it was decided to put Tamra on pitocin. Tamra by about 11 am was told to start pushing. Just at about that time her epidural stopped providing pain relief. She continued to try to deliver but was getting warn down by the pain. At about 12 the baby should had been down far enough to come out, but he was stuck. At 1pm The doctor came in to discuss what options we had. The three that Tamra was given were 1 to keep pushing, 2 try to vacuum the baby out or 3 to do a cesarean section. The pushing just was going to work after like 2 hours of pushing baby just wasn't coming out. Vacuum had the problem of baby could get further jammed along the way and it would be much more painful since the epidural wasn't working anymore so Tamra decided to go for the cesarean section. Tamra went in for the cesarean section around 1 pm and baby was born at 1:30 pm. Baby's head even after 2 hours of labor was 11 cm so he just wasn't going to fit. At this point baby and mom are doing well. Tamra is looking at needing six weeks to recover. I have planned to be off for three weeks. Please keep us in your prayers at this point that Tamra will completely and fully heal quickly from this unplanned surgery. Pray for our finances. We plan to use the federal stimulus refund to help with the lack of pay for three weeks. Pray also about my job situation. I am trying for a promotion at my current job but if I am going to be out for more then three weeks my employer might not consider me for that promotion. Please also pray for the rest of the family as we transition to the new member of the family. Particularly Heather is going to have to get use to not being they baby of the family. She is such a princess I am not sure how she is going to take having a new baby. That's the update for now. Thank you,
Mark Mattox
Read Journal History
Hospital Information: Patient Room: home was Emanuel
Portland, Oregon, 97220
home
Links: http://www.all-kids.org/faqs.html Explanations of many cancer terms including some of the chemotherapy drugs.
http://headtotoe.apta.org/nci/ncicdr0000343584.htm Page on late effects of chemo
http://www.freedomcomputerservices.com Mark's computer bussiness.
|
|
