News...

Hello everyone,

I know that I have spoken with some of you very recently concerning Paul, and there are others we haven't reached yet.

Paul has been admitted to Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston as of yesterday. The most probable diagnosis is Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia. He is scheduled for a bone marrow biopsy on Tuesday to confirm what they already believe. At this point they say he will be here in the hospital for atleast a month and will be starting intensive chemotherapy on Friday.

We learned of all of this within a very short 24 hour period. Paul had not really been feeling his usual self for the last couple of weeks. He was more tired than usual, eating less, unexplained bloody nose, joint pains, etc. I finally convinced him to go and see a doctor on Friday. They saw him about 1:30 that afternoon and drew some blood as they couldn't find any physical evidence of anything wrong. At 10:15 that same night one of the doctors from that practice called to speak with Paul concerning the lab results. He told us that Paul needed to be admitted to the hospital because his blood platelet count was extremely low. Normal platelet count is around 120,000 and Paul's was about 12,000. So we left Alayna with my sister and headed to Elliot Hospital in Manchester. They drew more blood and his levels had dropped to 9,000. He was given a platelet transfusion at 4:30 Saturday morning. At 9am the hematologist came in to discuss the new blood work and a smear they had done. He then told us he was pretty positive Paul had Leukemia. This information obviously floored us. That is when they started to make arrangements to get Paul down to Boston. There are still a ton of different scenarios and how this can play out. We are hopeful, as are the doctors, that Paul can overcome this.

We would appreciate if you could keep us in your thoughts as we go down this new path.

Amanda, Paul, & Alayna