Colleen here writing up this portion…
So yesterday was the big day.
Caid went into surgery at 7:30 am to have his bone marrow removed. He had it extracted from the sides of his hip bones. They took 280 ccs–nearly a pint of liquid marrow–which is quite a lot as we were unsurprised to hear. When he woke up the foremost concern on his mind was that he needed to play Wii…which made everyone happy!
Wren, Julie (Ginger’s sister), Henry and i arrived at CHOC yesterday around 11:30. We hoped Henry would nap on the way down but he insisted on talking to himself the whole time. First stop in the hospital was, of course, the gift shop…where we bought Caid a big stuffed shark, and Henry got his beloved balloon (his favorite word to say right now).
We had arrived just in time for Ian’s infusion with Caid’s marrow, and so once Henry and Julie were settled in the cafeteria Wren and i went upstairs to see Ian.
We walked into his room in the PICU to find Joey sitting and holding Ian. Also in the room were Papa Steve and 2 nurses, checking one of 2 bags of Caid’s bone marrow that was being infused straight into his body.
He had vomited just before we arrived…from any number of things (chemo, exhaustion, etc) and was now fast asleep on Joey’s chest. We only stayed for a few minutes, as we knew how tired and immune-compromised he was…but we got to see his darling face and i was able to take some pictures.
A couple of hours later, after trying to find a place the family could all settle that night and finally getting poor Henry down for a nap, we went to see Caid. He was in a little room with his mom & dad, fresh from a long nap.
He loved his stuffed shark. Ginger asked him if he wanted to see pictures of how Ian is doing, and he nodded, yes. So i showed him the pictures i took in Ian’s room, including the one of the marrow drip.
“That’s your marrow, Caid!” i said. His eyes widened for a moment, and he nodded again. “I’m the one who had to give it to him, because he’s the only one that matches me,” he stated. Ginger smiled “and you’re the only one that matches him,” she said. “Because you’re brothers.” Caid nodded a third time.
More coming very, very soon~~cnp