Day 0 TRANSPLANT DAY!

Today is the DAY! The plane is actually due in at 9pm tonight and we expect to start the infusion around 11pm. We know a little better what to expect tonight. Her nurse will stay in here the entire time of the infusion taking her blood pressure every 5 minutes and monitoring all of her vitals. Sometimes kids can have a reaction to the cells, just like an allergic reaction with hives or rashes. The most common thing they see is blood pressure issues, which is why the nurse will stay in here the whole time monitoring. Sometimes their pressure can go really high requiring medication and sometimes it can drop really low requiring medication or a bolus of fluids. A bolus of fluids means they hook her up to an IV of fluids and push it in really fast. It increases the fluids and pushes more fluids through your heart making it beat harder and faster. I'm sure a Nurse or Dr could explain that with better detail, but that is what it basically does.
If she is going to have any thing more severe it won't really happen until days or weeks later. That is why the following weeks will be the most critical. Tonight should be pretty uneventful, but I will be taking pictures of the whole thing to post. It probably won't get posted for several days because I can't upload pictures here from the hospital, but I will either send the camera home with Craig when he comes to visit or when I am at home next.
Her blood counts are finally where we expected them. Her immune system is gone. We've been really low like this before with chemo, but this time there are no rescue drugs to bring it back.
The nurse and I were just talking and she brought up an interesting thing. Avarie will have two different types of DNA now. Her blood will have one kind of DNA showing she is a man, and her skin and body will have her DNA. I thought that was funny, she could get away with a life of crime if she left blood behind. They would think they were looking for a man. The blood DNA won't effect anything else in her. She won't have problems with her body making male horomones or anything like that. They all operate separately. It will just be the DNA of her blood. Its strange but it feels like she is about to become a new person. I know she's not, just her bone marrow will be different, but it feels like she will. I wonder if it will have any affect on who she is, personality wise. I've heard those transplant stories about things like that, but who knows if they're real or not. Hopefully the man she's getting the marrow from was a good and kind man, just in case. Well he would have to be to have paid to be on the registry and then to have gone through all that he went through to donate anonymously to someone he has never met and may never meet. That takes a special person, especially for a guy at the age of 23. Not that young men are not kind and special people, its just not something that most 23 year old men would stop and think to do, to be on the registry and then to inconvenience themself and go through this process. He must be a very good man and the gratitude that I feel for him cannot be put into words. He is doing something that none of us can do, he is saving my babies life. He is a Superhero, he is our Superhero and I will love him and have a place in my heart for him for eternity.
We are going to be having a bone marrow drive in Avarie's name, we don't have a date set yet things are a little to crazy to try to organize it right now, but please everyone consider coming and being put on it. It only takes a cheek swab to get on. It costs money, around $50, unless we can find a corporation to sponsor it. Like maybe a News Station, it would be great publicity for them. But please everyone have that thought in the back of your mind to be put on it. You could be the answer to someone other childs prayers, just like this man is the answer to ours. We have met several children who don't have any matches and can't have a transplant and others who are having to have a less then perfect match, which will definitely be filled with compliations. The more people in the registry the more chances there are to save these children.
I will post again in the morning to let you all know how its gone, unless anything exciting happens between now and then. Please remember us in your thoughts and prayers today and tonight.