We’re Home Post-Transplant!

Big smiles for home!

First thing this morning we were eagerly awaiting Carter’s blood work results to find out his liver levels. They made him NPO (no food) after midnight, just in case they needed to schedule a biopsy to look into rejection issues. Well, Carter’s liver levels went down! Yeah! The doctor came in to tell us and said Carter could go ahead and eat and he’d come back later to talk to us. Carter was starving, so it was nice to finally be able to order him breakfast. The doctor came back around 12:30pm and said Carter can go home, as long as we agreed to come back to UCLA first thing on Monday morning for blood work. They’ll need us to stick around after they draw his blood on Monday and wait for results in case they need to make any adjustments to his meds. After having our last “education training session” with our transplant coordinator, we were anxious to get on the road.

Matt and I left feeling like we just overcame a huge hurdle in Carter’s recovery process. Exactly two weeks ago, we sat in the Surgical Waiting Room (as we pass by it every day in the hospital and think of that night) jumping every time the phone rang from the operating room to give us an update on Carter’s surgery. We have come a long way in those two weeks! We are SO lucky in so many ways…lucky Carter received a liver. Many children are waiting around on the pediatric floor just waiting for their call, and they are too sick or require too many meds to be waiting from home. We are lucky Carter’s donor’s liver was such an amazing match and his recovery has been in the top 10% of all pediatric liver transplants at UCLA in the past few years. We are lucky to live close to UCLA, one of the best liver transplant centers in the world. And we are so lucky to have had the best team of surgeons, doctors and nurses working with Carter. Matt and I can easily say the experience was 100 times better than we had anticipated, and it wasn’t always an easy road. The group of people treating Carter was truly remarkable, and we can see how they together have excelled at making such an outstanding program. We are honored they saved Carter’s life!

The next three months will be the most crucial in the remainder of Carter’s recovery. These next two rounds of chemo will be a challenge and balancing liver transplant meds with plunging ANC levels is not something we are looking forward to. Carter has been so resilient through all of this; we know we’ll make it though. Tonight the four of us got to have dinner together, play some games, and watch the crazy alien baby brother moving around in Mom’s tummy…who knew it could be so entertaining!

Just a few special thank you’s…Thank you Scott and Jody for letting us use your place in L.A. It was so nice to have a comfy bed and quiet place to clean up! Thank you to the Schulze Family and Gehl Family for your incredible support! And thank you to St. Mark Preschool for everything and making Bennett the happiest kid to be able to go there! Thank you to everyone for all your prayers the past two weeks! The day after Carter’s transplant, we had about 900 people reading the blog to check on Carter. Absolutely amazing!! Our family is SO lucky!...and we’re home! Yeah!!!!