Big Meeting

Wanted to start this blog with a cute picture so I am reminded who I am doing all this for. She is the most precious little girl I know and we are going to fight tooth and nail for her.

We had the first meeting with our transplant doc today. She is a very nice doctor who I have meet on other occasions and who Alivia is not afraid of (thankfully). She was very informative and gave us all books to read that will answer more questions. I'm full of questions but don't really want to know the answer to most of them cause the answers are hard to swallow. I am fighting not to dwell on the statistics right now. They are not very incouraging especially because of the type of leukemia that Alivia has. It is hard to get people with her disorder (or similiar disorders..because they have never actually seen this disorder before) into remission. Most of the time remission is neccassary for a transplant but we will get as close to it as we can before the transplant. Chances of a reaccurance of the leukemia without remission are higher. But we are trusting God that everything will be perfect. I'm just going to say the stats and then move on and not mention them again. There is a 13% chance of mortality, a 37% chance of reoccurance and a 50% chance of it working and her being healed. But God is not in to statistics is he?! He could heal my girl tomorrow. The best news we got today is that we will be home for Christmas. They want to do the transplant in January. Okay maybe that wasn't the best news...the best news was that her HLA typing (what they use to find a donor) is really good for finding a donor. There are 6 HLA markers and then those breakdown further into 10 total points they are trying to match. With a preliminary search there are quite a few people already that might match. They got our official permission to look at these people further. So they will start calling people who they think might match and doing further testing. Please pray for a perfect, 10 point match. Pray that the person they call will be willing and able and that they will be easy to find. Sometimes people aren't willing, have moved or have since developed something medically that would negate them from donating. So we praying for perfect.

Also please pray for Alivia's organs that they will continue to function well. Currently they are all doing well but any changes would mean a rush to transplant. We would love to avoid that. Pray that Alivia starts to walk soon. I know she is capable and just timid but for this mom it is really hard to see all the other kids her age or younger running around. I would love to have something that makes me feel a little normal. So that is a completely selfish prayer request...but there it is. Pray that God will provide us with a sweet nurse for transplant. We will be in the hospital at least 6 weeks and if today is any indication...I'm not too excited about leaving our clinic nurses. Even when we are discharged from the hospital we will still have to go to the transplant clinic for 6 months and I will miss the regular clinic nurses so much. One of the clinic nurses said that sometimes they will let transplant patients start going to the clinic again after a few months if they are doing well...that is something I will look forward to very much. Pray that Alivia's spleen shrinks or we will be having it removed the first week or so in December.

The pray request list could go on and on...but for now I'll stop. Mainly just pray for a miracle. Thanks

Thanks to Andy, Ann and Helena C. for the card, Janet B. for dinner and the Rickards for the note.

One last thing...if anyone works for a company that makes charitable contributions and they are looking for somewhere to donate go to friendsofalivia.blogspot.com . We have to raise quite a bit of money to pay for the drive we did on Sunday. Thanks