“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.  You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:11-13)

Praise God for the plans, hope, and future He has for Jeremy.

We received some terrible news today.  The preliminary results from this afternoon’s bone marrow aspirate show 15-20% blasts in Jeremy’s bone marrow.  The leukemia has relapsed.

I can’t describe how devastated we are by this news.  We were so confident that this transplant would be Jeremy’s cure.  To hear that it’s returned has completely crushed us.  We were sobbing incomprehensibly, repeating to ourselves over and over again, “Why? What happened? I can’t believe this is happening.  He was doing so well.”

We were asked to come back in tomorrow, Friday, 3/15, to be admitted for more chemo.  We don’t have all the specifics yet, but the docs want to talk to us tomorrow about what the options are.  Essentially, it’s more chemo, then a second transplant.

This hurts.  It really hurts.  We have no idea what this means for Jeremy.  The last thing we wanted was for him to have to go back to the hospital for more chemo, to have his body endure more harsh medication.  Can his body handle the stress of another transplant? Will he survive this?  We’ll just have to wait until tomorrow when we meet with the doctors.

Alice was carrying Matty in the living room, where Jeremy was playing on the iPad when I got the call.  When I finished the call, I walked over to Alice and we were trying to talk to each other through our tears.  Jeremy looked at both of us, stopped what he was doing, walked over to the box of tissues and brought one for each of us.  “One for Mommy.”  “And one for Daddy.”

We stand firm in our faith, in our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom we have eternal hope and salvation.  Through it all, God has continued to provide for Jeremy, and while relapse is definitely not what we wanted to hear today, we know that His ways are higher than our ways.

I’m sorry if this all seems so disjointed.  To be honest, after we got the news, I was walking around the house trying to figure out what we have to do next, what we have to prepare, only to realize that I was actually just wandering around aimlessly.

We let Jeremy stay up a little later tonight and we all slept and cuddled in the same bed.  Matty was a bit fussy and Jeremy calmed him down by holding his hand and singing to him.  He gave all of us equal attention, wrapping his hands tightly around our necks as he buried his face into ours.  He knows we’re going back to the hospital tomorrow and that it’ll be a while before we can come back home.

Please continue to pray with us.