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Well folks, we got through night
one on this new leg of the journey in pretty good shape. Garrett’s outlook has been remarkable, and I’m
proud of his resolve. He’s resting right
now after a very long night.He’s a little more bummed
today, because he’s tired and doesn’t
feel very good, but he’s still in the fight. He’s sad that his baseball is put back even
further now. That’s what we did the
night we found out he had to go back in.
We played catch, because we knew it would be a while before we could do
that again. Those precious moments are
worth everything. Cherish them.
The other night he told me he
wanted to come up here and “kick some butt.”
Yesterday morning when I got him up, I asked him if he was ready to “go
pick a fight?” He was! We did.
We had our initial face-to-face with the doctors and it was less
stressful than anticipated. They
confirmed that this is not a new rejection, but a continuation of probably the
same rejection from a couple of years ago.
They went after it pretty hard then and that’s when Garrett got so sick
from the chemo. The T-cells sorta festered until it showed
its ugly head again this spring. The
treatments done then were admittedly less aggressive, but they were hoping it
would do the trick. Obviously it hasn’t,
so were back in for another round with a more proven and insistent tactic. The good news is that so far he doesn’t show
any anti-body rejection, which means no plasma pheresis scheduled for now.
They performed a pic line
procedure yesterday without any issues, and a couple hours later started a
series of infusions consisting of 3 or 4 different drugs over the course of
about 10 hours. One of the meds, called
ATG, is a really harsh drug that works pretty well to fight T-Cell rejection. A few years ago he had an extremely bad serum
reaction to it. It was horrid! We are hoping that doesn’t happen this
time. Last night he had a few of the
symptoms, including joint pain, chest pain, elevated blood pressure and heart
rate and a slight fever. Today he’s been
a little nauseated. But if he makes it
through the next few days without worse symptoms, he’ll probably be ok. That would be a plus!
Jessi stayed right by Garrett’s
side last night, refusing to leave him. Kathy
was able to go off campus and get some sleep and we’ll switch off tonight so it’ll
be my turn. There’s really very little
rest in a hospital. We’ve spent so many
nights over the years trying to sleep in a chair and I’ve never quite mastered it.
The next week looks like this, as
the plan goes: 10 hour infusions twice a
day. Blood work, echo’s, ekg’s,
etc. They give him medicines before the
ATG and IVIG to help offset any reaction he might have. They plan on hitting this hard.
Kathy is better today after a
little sleep, which she surely needed.
This has been pretty hard on her emotionally. She obviously canceled her bike ride this
weekend, but those of you who donated for the ride, that money still goes to
help the cardiac program. The kids and I
were really looking forward to a weekend in the mountains cheering on momma and
relaxing, but it’ll have to wait.
For now we are counting our
blessings and ready to do what we have to do to win this fight. Sometimes it feels like we don’t get much of
a break but as soon as we start to feel sorry for ourselves, we see a child or
family who are being wheeled into the ICU.
We’re only in the cardiac critical care unit. We’ve got it made! So please keep the prayers coming for our
cowboy. They are working and we promise
not to weaken on this end.
More soon. God bless you all.
