A Post With Graphs Instead of Photos Can Only Mean One Thing

Not too long ago, Amy mentioned to me that she was hoping she could soon stop posting medical updates every week.  Unfortunately, we didn’t fulfill her real wish that there would be no medical updates to give, but I volunteered to do the update this week, partly to give her a break and partly to let everyone hear my perspective.

After flirting with illness for several days last weekend, Aaron finally ran a temperature over 101.5 degrees on Tuesday, which meant we had to be admitted to the hospital again.  He had several more fevers over the next several days which meant we were hospitalized until Saturday afternoon. 

He is so done with the hospital.  When we knew we had to go in, it was all we could do to convince him that they have good reasons for this decision and that it was in his best interest to go.  He literally dragged his feet the whole way in from the parking lot.  I had to keep glancing back over my shoulder to make sure he was still following me in. 

That is a stark contrast to how he acted when we got to leave yesterday.  When he got the green light to go, he marched briskly out.  I basically had to jog to try keep up with him, but I constantly fell behind trying to juggle our belongings.  He didn’t once look back to make sure I was following him out.  He didn’t care one bit.  His eyes were fixed on that door and he wasn’t going to break stride, probably out of fear that if he slowed or made eye contact with anyone, they could change their mind and make him stay longer.

I just want to go on the record that my attitude towards Primary Children’s Hospital is much more positive than Aaron’s.  I have a very tender spot in my heart for that place and all the caregivers there.  It is true that some of my darkest days have been spent there, but I have been helped through those hard times by both earthly and heavenly angels.  Each setback so far has been accompanied with miraculous healings, peaceful assurances, and some of my most special spiritual experiences.  It feels almost like a temple there to me, probably because I see that the people are so focused on healing and caring for all those sick little kids.  Christ has that same focus. 

I am not as good as Amy at taking pictures to document our journey, but I am better at making graphs.  I’m including some charts that show Aaron’s progress in several areas since his transplant. 

This one shows how his cytomegalovirus numbers have been doing.  He’s almost back down to zero.  We’re hoping that happens soon.

These last three show his cell counts (note:  hemoglobin is used instead of red blood cell count).  The green part of each chart indicates where he needs to be to get into normal range.  The red lines indicate when he had a transfusion.

Overall, he still has a ways to go for his counts to be normal, but he is on a good upward trend. Even his recent infections and hospital stays haven't done much to derail his progress.  Good job, Aaron.