Reflection and Celebration

Remember this?

November 20th 2008

Someone told me a couple of weeks ago that we would get our call for William's transplant when we least expected it. Well, yesterday was quite a day!!! I will post properly later with the whole story but for now, the big news is that William is in theatre having his new tummy. He went in at 7am this morning and we are expecting an update at about 12.00pm when they will be half way through the op. I am excited, happy, relieved, worried...and very sad and thankful to the donor family. My thoughts are with them.

Can you believe that was a year ago?? It has been an incredible year. I am feeling very reflective and, I'm sure, will be blogging more about our transplant story over the coming days. It is surprising how much you just deal with on auto pilot at the time you are going through it and it comes back raw some time later. It's a good thing I think. Some things can't be comprehended fully when you're experiencing as thinking about it all too much. You just go on autopilot and get on with the practicalities of the situation. If you have been following this blog, you will remember that we had our ups and downs during William's transplant recovery. I called it a rollercoaster - and it was for 3 months. William was well enough to come home at the end of February and the journey to that day contained a good few times when things were very worrying. Things just took their time with Wills though and since then he has never looked back - 9 months of excellent health, something we could never have dreamed for before his transplant. Here's to many more! We have our donor and her wonderful family to thank for that and we do that very day.

Today, we remembered them by lighting a candle while we shared our thoughts and said a prayer. We were hoping to let of a chinese lantern but it is a tad too wet and windy so we'll do that over Christmas instead. Reflection was an important part of today but so was celebration. Celebration of William's gift and celebration of how far he has come this year. He is now off tube feed in the day and drinking strawberry milkshake instead, supplemented with a tube feed overnight. Today, we celebrated strawberry style with strawberries and strawberry fluff for breakfast and a strawberry birthday cake at home and at school. I gave the children a new breakfast set each so they all have a lovely Cath Kitson cup, bowl, plate and egg cup to commemorate this special milestone. Wills chose a birthday tea at MacDonalds - a happy meal to play with (not quite eating that yet). It has been an amazing day, an emotional day, weird at times but amazing.