Sorry about the title of the question, I don't quite know how to ask what I am trying to accomplish here. Perhaps my code samples below can be more of help to you. But first here is a little information.
I am using the PDO driver to execute queries to my database.
$stmt = $this->conn->prepare("UPDATE `support` SET `message` = `message` + :message WHERE `id` = :id AND `userid` = :uid");
$stmt->bindParam(':id', $id, PDO::PARAM_INT);
$stmt->bindParam(':uid', $userid, PDO::PARAM_INT);
$stmt->bindParam(':message', $smessage, PDO::PARAM_STR);
if ($stmt->execute()) {
$this->formatted_message($userid);
}