Testing Day

So today was testing day. Mark was woken up at 5:45 this morning by nurses wanting to take his blood for the viral tests they want for the infectious disease doctor. Then came the bone marrow biopsy. They gave Mark some IV medicine to make him relax and kind of sleepy so he would not care about the pain and discomfort of the procedure because you cannot numb bone. They also put some numbing agent to numb his skin for the incision. Unfortunately, Mark seems to be resistant to these types of things because he felt EVERYTHING.

A bone marrow biopsy is basically the doctor makes a small incision and inserts a very small pointy tube into the incision and into the bone. Once in the bone, the doctor suctions out some bone marrow (the fluid in the bone that makes your blood cells). Then the doctor removed a small sliver of bone about the thickness of a toothpick. Mark described it like a person taking a jackhammer to his back - painful.

So after the procedure which took about 30 minutes, the sedative kicked in and Mark slept practically comatose for about 3 hours. Once he woke up, the nurse gave him 2 Loritab for his back pain and he knocked out for about another hour. Now he feels better though his back really hurts. The doctor said he will hurt more tomorrow, but should feel better very soon.

Then a dermatologist came to visit because Mark has a strange blotchy redness that randomly comes and goes and started just before this whole situation started. Basically he has stumped the dermatologist, but they did a skin biopsy to see if they can figure it out. This was much easier than the other biopsy. These results will take several days, possibly a week.

As far as updated information, we really have nothing at this point. We are thinking we will have preliminary results from the bone marrow tomorrow which will hopefully rule out leukemia and other severe causes.

I admit, it is funny that Mark keeps stumping so many specialists because they just don't know what to think about his symptoms. Hopefully we will figure out something soon so we can start any necessary treatment.