Pastor Reno.com

thoughts on life and faith

Post Archive

27 Mar

Posted at 14:12h in Church, Missions by

Mary has been on the chemo now since Friday afternoon and it is making her extremely sick.  She had to receive more blood and platelets on top of that yesterday.  The chemo is causing a great deal of pain and she pretty much all of the other side effects that chemo treatment brings.  Bro. Bob stated that they have her sedated, but the pain is too much.  She just lays there in a fetal position and they try to get the nausea under control.  There was a moment of levity on the phone when he was explaining that he doesn't...

25 Mar

Posted at 10:48h in Church by

After a difficult night of fighting fevers and then being treated for some kind of infection, the doctors told Mary on Thursday afternoon that she has a type of Leukemia that responds well to chemo.  Of course with hers being so far along, that poses some issues.  Her chemo treatments have been put off as she waited for these test results and because of the fevers, and need for blood transfusions.  This news from the doctor is good news and has lifted Bob and Mary's spirits.  They decided on attempting to start the chemo on Friday. Thursday night was another hard...

23 Mar

Posted at 21:59h in Church by
As many of you know, Bob & Mary Johnston have come off of the field temporarily due to Mary having Leukemia.  She has been sick for some time now and following some testing and a diagnosis in the Dominican Republic, they decided to come back.  She was too weak to travel so she received several transfusions and once she was able to they got off the plane and headed straight to Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri.

08 Feb

Posted at 16:47h in Church by

I had been waiting for the results from a bunch of blood tests where the doctors were checking to see if anything else was attacking my kidneys, and they all came back negative or normal.  The plan they have for me now is to preserve my kidney function for as long as possible and to monitor the protein leak and kidney function with blood and urine tests. I will not be going on any medications until the protein level changes or I become symptomatic.  I have to find some new pain killers other than NSAIDS, and find some "granola" ways of...

04 Feb

Posted at 01:12h in Church by
Well I went today to see a Nephrologist in Seattle.  I had some more blood tests among some other things, and got to spend quite a bit of time with him.  Based on my medical history and the tests thus far, here are today's conclusions: I have been diagnosed with two things.  One is what is called "thin basement membrane disease".  This disease allows blood to leak into my kidneys, and is mostly benign with a small percentage of people having progressing problems from there.  My other "possible" problem is "iGa Nephrothapy " -  this is a kidney disorder that occurs when IgA—a protein that helps the body fight infections—settles in the kidneys. After many years, the IgA deposits may cause the kidneys to leak blood and sometimes protein in the urine. While 25% of adults with iGa develop end-stage renal failure, if this is what I have, I increase the percentage due to the fact the TBMD is leaking blood and protein into the kidneys too.  If you wonder what these things are, or want more information, you can google it (been talking about it all day...kinda don't want to anymore).

01 Feb

Posted at 16:23h in Church by
I wanted to post a thank you to all of you who have been praying for me the last couple of weeks.  I also wanted to post what has been going on and will update the blog when I find anything else out or have any procedures.  Here is what has been going on... The men in my church wanted me to increase the life insurance that I have, so I had my agent set me up with another policy and order the physical exam.  After the labs got back, the insurance broker sent me a letter indicating that my insurance would be "rated" because of a high microalbumin/creatinine levels in my urine sample.  I thought this was odd, so I asked my doctor to run labs to prove them wrong.  The labs the doctor ran came back worse than the insurance ones though.

17 Jan

Posted at 19:58h in Church by

It has been a little while since I have been on here to blog.  I will try to do better.  As I was thinking about what I might post, the first thing that came to mind was a few prayer requests.  There are about a million that I could put here, but I would like to ask you to pray for just a couple that I have from the past couple of days: 1.  Please pray for Julie...