Diagnosis

Unfortunately, it's official. Patrick has been diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Not the best news, but at least now we know what we're working with. Here are the treatment details as we know them right now.

Tomorrow morning, Patrick is off to the "bio-preservation" clinic to, as he puts it, freeze his boys. Gotta think about the future I suppose. As soon as he gets back, they'll start his chemotherapy. He'll have three types of chemo. The first one is given for 24 hours, 7 days straight. The second will be given for 2 hours for 3 days and the third for 10 minutes for 3 days (and will turn his pee red!). The goal of the chemo is to kill off everything in his bone marrow, good and bad cells. Hopefully, after 14 days, his marrow will be cleared out. Then he waits until his cell counts come back up and he's outta here (usually around 2 weeks). He'll continue to have follow up treatments over the next several months, and hopefully in about 6 months, he'll be totally done!

Patrick has a lot of pros going for him right now, so the outlook is good. His age, his health, catching it early, some specific chromosomes that will hopefully assist in his recovery (yeah, McDonald's are genetically superior), and of course, his outlook. He will lose his hair, so he's bummed, but he's going to shave it off and donate it to Locks of Love. Yes, I'll post pictures. He's still feeling good and has nurses and doctors "claiming" him as a patient. Gotta love him!

More to come tomorrow.