A little light reading and a movie night!

It's not what you think....we got our donor packet and DVD yesterday. So Ryan and I spent the evening reading and watching a movie about stem cell and bone marrow donation. Please by praying for Ryan over the next few days as he navigates through this process. He has a huge decision to make. They have asked him to donate stem cells and we thought that would be the best choice because it's not a surgical procedure and it's less invasive. But now that we've educated ourselves a little bit we're not really too excited about him donating stem cells. In fact we really don't want him to do it. We would really prefer it if he could just donate his bone marrow. The main reason we don't want him to donate stem cells is because they would inject Ryan with a drug that is experimental and not approved by the FDA. It has some scary side effects that might complicate some other medical issues Ryan already has, so it's not the best choice for Ryan, but it might be the best choice for the patient. So we've got to weigh all of these things and figure out what to do. He WILL do one or the other, at this moment we're just hoping he can donate bone marrow. We could change our minds as we talk through this with all the different bone marrow representatives. So just PRAY that Ryan will make the best choice for himself and for the patient.

And now a little info. about the patient. They've told us everything that they can tell us. The patient is a 59 year old female with AML Leukemia. We have no idea where she lives. She might not even live in the United States. The National Bone Marrow Donor program is a world wide registry. Now that we know something about her I've found myself thinking about her a lot and sending little prays up to Heaven for her through out the day as I change diapers, fold laundry and pick up toys. For some reason I'm picturing her with kids and grand kids. I'm figuring that she's fighting hard for her life because she wants to see her grandchildren grow up and she doesn't want to leave her children. I guess I'm picturing someone like my own mom and that makes me really excited that Ryan is doing this. And oh how I'm praying that it works! So please pray for her too!