Happy 2009!

Happy New Year! 2009 will be a year of hope and healing at the McDonough home.

Time to catch up on what's happened in the last week.

We had a great Christmas with Michelle's parents and Bill's brother Tim visiting. Michelle's folks arrived by car from Arizona the Sunday before Christmas and stayed with us for a week. It was great to have them with us and we really appreciated all their help and support.

Michelle's sister arrived from California Sunday night and has been a big help all week, and even enabled Bill go back to work. She's heading back home tonight (Friday Jan 2).

On the health front, we went down to Denver on Friday, December 26 for an early morning procedure to replace Michelle's bile duct stent, which had become blocked causing her bilirubin levels to rise. It's important to keep those levels down to satisfy the treatment protocol for the chemotherapy drugs.

For the first few days after the procedure, Michelle seemed to get better. We managed to keep her pain under control and she was relatively comfortable through the weekend and Monday. Unfortunately, on Tuesday we noticed she was getting yellow and itchy again, a sign of jaundice and an indicator that the bilirubin was on the rise again. Blood work on Wednesday confirmed levels higher than before the 12/26 procedure. Another blood draw is scheduled for today, and it looks like another procedure may be in the cards early next week.

We'll keep you posted.