On the way to school!

So I figured that since a BMT (Bone Marrow Transplant) is a family experience it is only fair to add some of what is going on with the girls also. This is the pic Uncle Darren sent me of the girls on their way to school the first day at his house. Aunt Lisa is amazing and even curled their hair which is more than I do unless it is picture day or the Valentine Tea! Way to go Uncle Darren and Aunt Lisa! They are looking good.

Day -22

Ok - so a little about BMT dating. Transplant day is considered Day 0. Everything they do before Transplant is considered minus days and everything after labled as positive. So right now we are on Day -22. Here is a little of how our day went!

I love new toys and daddy! A little floor time cause we got sick of playing in the bed!

SO they have a great thing here called Child Life. It is a program that employs development specialists who have been trained to work with ailing children and their families. They can come and work one-on-one with your child, provide respite to parents or best of all bring all sorts of toys into the room for your child to play with. So we took advantage of that right away! Yay for new toys!

Now lunch. They have food here set up on a "room service" schedule. What that means is that they provide you with a menu and you can pretty much order anyting on the menu anytime between 7 am and 7:30 pm. Today we had lunch of mac & cheese (which was hhhhhhot - according to Aiden) and...

coke in a sippy. Delicious and nutricious :) This is slightly important as we see a reappearance of it shortly when we start chemo. They started the chemo at 5:15pm. We had some other meds first to help with the possible side effects like: benadryl, tylenol, and hydrocortisone. They will continue to give these to him every six hours until we are done with the chemo treatments on Sun. They take vitals every 30 min during the chemo treatment which was 2 hours today. He did ok for about 15 mins and then started to sweat and cough a little and cry. About five min later we saw lunch come back to haunt us :) He even sneezed out two macaroni after we got him cleaned up, poor baby.

And now a much more comfortable Aiden after Ativan to help with the tummy sickness. Now they will just give that to him as part of the meds to help with the side effects. He did well through the rest of the treatment which ended at 7:15. The rest of the evening was a little rough as Aiden was fussy and irritable (who can blame him?) but we haven't seen any more side effects at this time. Which is so great. He is really really irritable due to the steroids they are giving him. Again thank goodness for technology. Other than that one little hiccup we are doing great and so is Aiden. Thank you all for all of your prayers and love and support. WE definitely feel it here. More to come later!

Oh and a PS: Aiden hates hates hates to have his temp taken under his arm.

We've Arrived

This is the cool horse outside the front entrance of Primary Children's Medical Center! Aiden was like "Ok--what are we doing here at this time of the morning and why am I awake?" At least I look chipper!! It is all a ruse! We were up packing last night until about 12:30. Then Aiden had a little bit of a rough night. His new thing is to wake up every hour and a half until 5 am then sleep solid til 11am! Not sure I love the schedule. But then again--sleep is probably over rated :)

Here is our hodpital room number and we are in quarentine because one of Aiden's tests last week said that he had the rhino virus "common cold" and since we are on the ICS (Immuno Compormised Service) Unit we have to stay put. They are even doing a special chest x-ray to make sure that his cold is all good and we are good to go with the first chemo!

So last night we had a shaving party to get everyone ready for the hospital. Daddy's chin, Aiden's head and mommy's legs. Obviously we wanted to see the bald head and chin, not so much the legs :) We love the new fuzzy head and it is chemo friendly.

AAAAAAHHHHHHHH! Let me out! My new jail cell or bed :) Just kidding he actually really likes the new bed cause he can walk around and around and around. Plus it puts him almost exactly level with the TV so he can watch all the new new and novel cartoon channels that they have here at PCMC. The girls are gonna be so jealous!! We are getting all caught up on our cartoon watching. Already we have seen Shrek 4, and are currently watching the Princess and the Frog! Luckily it is almost nap time.

At this point we are waiting for the chest x-ray so that we can make sure that everythingis good and healthy so that we can start on the test chemo. Thank goodness for wireless networks and netbooks and all the other technologies that keep us entertained. We have been visited by a myriad of docs, nurses, nurse practioners, etc. and were told that the goal is still to be outta here on Mon for 10 days :)

We are almost ready to start this adventure! We have to be at Primary Children's at 8:00 am tomorrow morning to get admitted (or possibly committed). Which means that we will be leaving here at 6:00 am. Not sure how I feel about that. But here we go! They will actually start the first round of Chemo tomorrow after we get all settled. We have been packing like mad for the last 3 days and I still feel like I am forgetting something. Probably just the fact that I am losing my mind. We have updated family pictures some of which I have posted. Last week and on Monday Aiden had a myriad of tests done and everything came back healthy and great. Which is the best time to start a transplant. He even gained 2 lbs. The nurses and doctors were pleased as they hardly ever see weight gain pretransplant! I will try to be better at posting as now I will be confined to a hospital room without anything better to do :)! We love you all and feel so blessed. We know that we will continue to be blessed and are so glad that you will be able to witness the miracle that is Aiden!

We have a schedule!!!

Transplant date has been set for OCT 8th!

We will be in Salt Lake for a myriad of tests on Sept 7-9

Sept 13th - Educating parents day
Sept 16th - Admitted to Primary Children's Medical Center (PCMC)
Sept 16th-19th - First Chemo drug (we will be admitted to the hospital for these days, if he tolerates the chemo well they will send us home for 10 days at this point. If not we will continute to stay in the hospital.)
If they have sent us home we will be readmitted to PCMC on Sept 30th
Sept 30th-Oct 3: Second Chemo drug
Oct 5: Third Chemo drug
Oct 6th-7th: Rest Days

OCT 8th: TRANSPLANT DAY!!

At this point we wait and watch for the new immune system to come back online and get to acceptable levels that say it was successful!

We want to thank all of you! Aiden is doing wonderfully at this point, he is gaining weight and feeling good. It has been amazing for us to feel the faith and prayers that have been put out there on our behalf and know that the hope we have felt is due to the love and support we have received from everyone! Thank you thank you! Words are not enough to express our gratitude and appreciation. We have been so blessed. We know that this journey will be an adventure and we have a lot of hope that things will go well! We will continue to update the blog on Aiden's progress.

Love,
The Welsh's (Brent, Kimberly, Kaitlin, Hailey and Aiden)

A Donor

A donor has been selected for Aiden! There are still a few things to be done but things should be happening pretty soon! We would appreciate everyone's prayers for Aiden. Thanks!

Enjoy the pictures from the fundraiser!!

Aiden made it to the yard sale!
Things were busy right from the start...

A HUGE thank you to the awesome young women for doing the bake sale!!!

Another HUGE thank you to Jamie for the amazing bracelets (of which I now own one)!

Look at all the great donations :)

Kaitlin and Hailey warming up the bouncy house for the kids to come

Aiden loving his new Webkinz doggie!

Enjoying the bouncy house!

Hailey...self explanatory

Taking a walk!

The young women relaxing after a long morning selling baked goods.

Jen and Kim

Dave and Emmy :) We owe you so much Dave, THANK YOU!