Thank you all for your comments and thank you Grace for even starting this thread. I haven't been on here because the situation with my brother in law has taken a horrifying turn for the worse. He collapsed over a week ago (again) and it seems that they did not get all the infection out of his lungs the first time this happened about 6 or 7 weeks ago. The STUPID, moronic Respritologist overruled the Oncologist's desire to keep him in until the infection was 100% gone. As a result, it's come back with a vengence and there is the very real possibility that he is going to die from it. It was so bad that they had to stick a ventilator down him and put him in a drug induced coma. They've managed to vacuum out some of the infection that was in his lungs. It was really thick and they had to spray saline solution down his lungs just to be able to move the stuff. They've done that for the last few days and I guess the stuff that's coming up now is more clear, so I'm hoping that that's a sign that they've got alot of the infection out. If Scully or ex-njw know precisely what this means, please let me know.
Another problem is that one of his antibiotic mixtures was mixed incorrectly and it crystalized as it was going into him. I have no idea if that's made him worse or what, but someone's head is going to be on the chopping block up there for making such a stupid mistake. My own feeling is that he should have been moved down to Princess Margaret Hospital when he first collapsed but my sister felt that the doctors here were going a great job and said 'no'. I think after these two major blunders, she's reconsidering that maybe he should have been sent there, but it's too late now. There's no way he can be moved in his condition. On top of all this, he started bleeding internally the other night because his platelet count was down to 10 so they quick and gave him two bags of platelets.
We are simply trying to take this one day at a time and while we're trying to keep optimistic, it's really hard when it's one bad thing after another. This isn't even the primary disease----it's just the secondary one and even if he survives this, he still has to go through the horror of chemotherapy for the stem cell transplant down the road. That's where the roads cross: it will either cure him, or kill him. There's no middle ground.
I've cried more this year than in all the previous years of my life put together.