I cannot believe we are already in June.  Do you realize it has been almost 9 months since Jack’s stem cell transplant??  Hard to believe time has passed by so fast…

Jack woke up this morning, and of course Braden and I were already up since Braden wakes up at the crack of dawn, and when he came to the top of the stairs before he came down he yelled, “Hey!  We are one day closer!!!  My countdown is getting sooooo little!!!” The first thing Jack does when he wakes up in the morning is rip one of the countdown rings off and counts how many days are left before the tubes come out.  We got ready and Nikki came to meet us and Jack, Braden, Nikki, and I took off for the hospital this morning for Jack’s EKG and Echo.  We were able to see Jack’s favorite Child Life buddy, Amanda, right when we got there.  Even though it was a quick visit because she was off to a meeting, it was so nice for him to see her.  He has asked about her since the day we left the hospital and it was great running in to her.

Off we went to the appointment.  I was dreading it a little bit because Jack really does not like getting this done.  An Echo and EKG are the most painless of any of the tests that he has had to go through, but he has hated it since the beginning.  Fortunately, we had a wonderful guy who was performing the tests on Jack.  He cracked jokes with Jack and talked to Braden all to distract Jack and keep him happy.  About 20 minutes later, all was done and we were on our way!  Such a short appointment, but a good one.

We came home and after lunch Braden went down for a nap and Jack and I did some work in some of the school books that we got him.  He is doing really well and I think he will catch up fast when he goes to pre-K.  We also had a delivery today of the new bracelets for Jack and all of his supporters!  We will have them for sale soon on the website, but they are so cool!  We got them in large, medium and small sizes for kids.  Jack has been wanting a green bracelet for so long like mommy and daddy so now we have them for not only him, but all of you!  Hopefully we will have it all up and running by next week.  Get a bracelet, wear it, think of Jack and all he has been through and spread the word.  In fact, get one for you and for a friend!

Anyway, all is good here and we will be heading off to bed soon.  So looking forward to Friday morning!!!

Day 2 of scans…done.  We woke up Jack again at 5:15 AM and right when I woke him up he said, “Let’s go in your room and have breakfast in bed”  Once we got in our room and I got him settled he decided to tell me, “You know you shouldn’t wake me up until it is sunny outside.”  He is so right, but we do what we have to do.  We made breakfast and he ate it up before the cutoff time and then around 10:00, Zac, my dad, Jack, and I headed off to PCH.  We were greeted by one of our favorite radiology nurses, Angela, and of course Dr Maze.  ”A” was doing Jack’s bone marrow biopsy today so she of course came in the room and Jack got a huge laugh out of her.  It always makes me happy when we see all of these Dr’s and nurses bring such a huge smile to his face.

We went in to the CT room and Jack and Dr Maze got everything ready…set up the machines and then Jack sat on the table and helped again with the Propofol.  Once Jack was asleep, we went and grabbed a quick lunch where we were met by our friend Sue as she was volunteering today at PCH.  We chatted for a bit and were also able to see some of our favorite nurses from when we were inpatient for chemo.

We headed back to the radiology waiting room and waited and waited.  I started to get a bit nervous because I felt like the MIBG was taking a bit long and made a comment to my dad and Zac that I hope they weren’t having to take additional images because they found something wrong…within a minute later Angela came out and told us, “I didn’t want you to worry that we were taking additional images or anything but we are on a new MIBG machine and for some reason it is a lot slower than our old one.”  Funny that she had the perfect timing so my nerves were calmed again.

Once Jack was done we were back in recovery with another favorite recovery nurse, Beth, and of course Dr Maze.  He said that Jack did wonderful and we are all anxious to see the results.  Since Jack has been on Accutane his skin is a bit sensitive and the tape that was on his face holding down the tubes and such while he was under causes some irritation so he looked as if he had been in a hockey fight.  Poor little guy.  He woke up a bit irritated that his face and his biopsy points on his hips were sore but once we were home he was totally back to normal.  We have had a great night and even though tomorrow will be a long day of waiting, it will be a good day.  We have Braden’s cardiology appt in the morning and then we will take the boys out to do something to pass the time.  We will update you after we know the results on Friday…

Please pray as hard as you can that Jack has clear scans.  He has made it this far and we thank God that he has done so well. We want him to continue on this path so we need clear scans.

On a side note, thank you all for your texts, emails, messages, posts that wished me a happy birthday.  It was so sweet to hear from so many people!  Thank you so much and may my biggest wish come true Friday morning….