This beautiful family needs so much love, prayers, and support we can Give them! Mike has received some terrifying and shocking news this week.
Please if you feel moved to help please reach out to me.
ANYTHING will help.
This is from Alyssa Stephens❤️🙏🏼
Just Wanted to give an update on Mike. First of all, we would like to thank everyone for all the calls, text, visits, cards, goodies, just the out pour of support the past day and a half. It means so much to us and has really made us feel so much love. ❤️
As some of y’all know, Mike has been having back pain more so in his pelvis at the right SI joint and in his right hip and leg. He didn’t think much about its just the “normal” overuse feeling. In the past couple weeks his pain has gotten worse. We thought it was a herniated disc putting pressure on the sciatic nerve. He tried a chiropractor which only increased his pain so he stopped going. By this time his mobility was decreasing, not able to walk more than 20 ft, stand, sit, lay down, get comfortable in anyway, even drive. But if you know Mike, he’s a tough one and pushed thru. His pain began to be so bad that he couldn’t sleep. So 2 weeks ago we went to urgent care, then a week later to the ER, 4 days later appointment at Ortho Arkansas in Little Rock, then the next day ER again (attempted MRI twice but was not able to tolerate due to pain even on morphine and then Dilaudid) and nobody could see or find a problem or wanted to help us so we reached out to the wonderful Dr. Hoke and he listened and started the process to find out what was going on. On Monday he orders an MRI with sedation that was scheduled for Tuesday (yesterday) because other MRIs that was attempted had to be stopped because he was not able to tolerate laying on his back. When the order for the lumbar MRI was ordered I asked them if they would also look at his SI joint because that was where he could pinpoint pain (again, thank you Dr. Hoke for listening) so he did. Shortly after they started the MRI, I received a call that I’ll never forget. They found the problem. There is a mass on his right kidney that has metastasized to his bones. It has crushed his sacrum all the way to his tailbone and has “eaten” the R femur bone to the point where at any time it could fracture, pretty much shatter. He is scheduled for surgery on Friday morning for a rod to be put in his femur in hopes that it will give him stability and reduce his pain caused by his pelvis, crushed sacrum and sciatic nerve and increase mobility.
His cancer is not curable but is treatable and manageable. They can’t stop the spread but can slow it down. We feel like we have been blessed with a great team of doctors (oncologist, orthopedic and nurses) to give him the best care and treatment possible.
In order to treat his cancer we have to
1. get his pain under control, it’s very severe
2. place a rod in his femur so it will not shatter and get him mobile. His leg is very weak. If it fractures it’s a whole different problem.
Once we see that his body will accept it and is able to tolerate, he will progress with his strength and mobility and pain management. Then we’re going to attack his cancer fiercely. Dr. Scroggins feels like Mike is strong enough and healthy enough that he will be able to tolerate the aggressive treatments to slow down the growth of his cancer. They don’t want to overwhelm us right now with all that until they can get the first couple of steps done. He has more testing that has to be done and a long hard road a head of us BUT we will climb this mountain together like we always do.
Please, please keep the prayers coming. We can feel them. We can see them. And we appreciate and need them.
We appreciate everyone helping with our kiddos. We haven’t told them everything but they know daddy’s back is hurt and we are trying to get it fixed.
Needless to say, going into MRI thinking herniated disc and sciatic to find out it’s the horrific big C, we went into shock and emotions all over the place. We are trying to stay positive and strong but we definitely have our moments.
I will keep y’all posted and would love for y’all to continue to pray for Mike, for us!! Thank you and we love all of you. ❤️💙
