16 July 2012

Dates and a Confirmed Donor

We started our day (Thursday, July 12th) by taking Brooklin to cross country practice, Caleb to Schofield to have his blood drawn for blood counts, and London to the middle school for summer band..all before 9am!   When the doctors called us back with Caleb's blood counts, they had a lot of information for us.

Caleb has a date for his transplant!

First, the test we were waiting for was for a virus called CMV.  Caleb is CMV negative, so the doctors needed to know if either of the girls were CMV negative because that would make them a better match.  And through some miracle...BOTH girls were CMV negative!  Heavenly Father is really watching over us through this whole thing!!

Caleb will be admitted to the hospital on August 8th to have his chest catheter inserted.  The chest catheter will be used to transplant the bone marrow.  The following four days, (9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th) he will have chemotherapy to destroy all of his remaining bone marrow before the transplant.  He will have one day of "rest" on the 13th, and then Wednesday August 14th he will have his bone marrow transplant.  Brooklin, who is the confirmed donor (as of today!...July 16th) will also go in on Aug. 14th to have her bone marrow harvested before the transplant.  

In order to get ready for the transplant, the doctors have to check Caleb out from top to bottom.  Today he went in for a blood count and one other blood test, an echocardiogram, an EKG, and a pulmonary test.  He also has to have his 5th platelet transfusion this afternoon.  Tomorrow he has an audiology appointment.  Wednesday, both Caleb and Brooklin will go in to Kapiolani to have some blood work done.  Also sometime in the next week or so, Brooklin will go in to donate a bag or two of blood to herself, to be transfused back to her after the bone marrow harvest so she can recover quicker!

Having an echocardiogram.
He did not want me taking his picture, so I covered him up a bit with photoshop. =) 

EKG


Caleb will be in the hospital for about a month after the transplant to make sure that he doesn't have any bad reactions and so they can make sure that the transplant worked and he is making his own cells again...which consequently will all be genetically xx instead of xy since he will have his sisters bone marrow!  =)

1 comment:

AJ said...

We love you guys!!! Even my teenage daughters are following you on your blog now and tell me when there is an update. Please know you are in our family's prayers!

AJ