Dear Oakley

Dear Oakley,

Your room, waiting in anticipation for your new bone marrow

 Today is a very important day! It's your day zero, your start over day. Today you are getting a whole new immune system. Your dad and I have been so excited for you that we didn't really sleep (we each took about an hour nap), because we didn't want to miss the bone marrow's arrival. You've been in the PICU for 5 days  now, and we've been sad to see you hurting from your chemo conditioning. One of your chemotherapy drugs made your lungs take on a little extra fluid, and made it kind of hard for you to breathe. You've been on oxygen off and on the whole time you've been here (and it's put a damper on your Halloween week outfits), on a regular nasal cannula, a high-flow cannula, and CPAP.

Look how dark red it is

Your bone marrow transplant infusion started at 5:27 AM, and when the BMT team brought it in, they sang Happy Transplant Day to YOU (it's a lot like Happy Birthday, but a little more special-everyone has a Birthday, but not everybody gets a whole new immune system, and a second shot at life given to you by a stranger). We don't know very much about the person who donated part of his immune system to you. We will find out more about him in a year; but for now, we know he is 23 years old, is a boy, has O+ blood type (and now you'll change to that from A+), and he lives in Europe. Your transplant was supposed to get here yesterday evening, but there was a hurricane on the East Coast of the United States called Hurricane Sandy that delayed the marrow in getting to you as soon as possible. Once it arrived in Seattle, it had to go to a lab, where they took the bone marrow and put it in a machine called a centifuge that spun it around and around until some of the clear liquid separated from the red blood cells, so they could drain them off to make it more dense.

Here it is!

As of a few hours ago, you weighed 6.35 kg (which is 14 lbs exactly), but you've been growing so well, they used an old weight when they got the transfusion. You are getting 126 mL of blood cells, and you're still so tiny that they have to give it to you really slow; it's going to take over 4 hours!

before your transplant

We love you so much, buddy. We are so happy that you're young enough that you won't remember any of this experience; because even though there has been a lot of great stuff (awesome people who've come to love you, who've saved your life, who've helped keep Mommy and Daddy sane), there has been a lot of tough stuff you've gone through too. It's not the end of either for us, dude, but we're going to make sure we fight with you the whole way through. You haven't lost your hair from the chemo yet, you're supposed to get some pretty nasty rashes soon, and there's a pretty high likelihood that you'll get something called GVHD (that stands for graft versus host disease) that will make you sick. The whole way through though, people comment on how cute you are, because despite all you've been through, you've given smiles and coos to nurses and doctors and have made their days.
You've got a lot of people rooting for your success buddy. They've been praying for you to get through the whole thing, because several times, you've given us some scares that you wouldn't make it. There are people all over who are supporting you with their thoughts and prayers, and that has given us a lot of hope.
Well, we're going to update your grandparents and uncles now, we love you and are so proud of how strong you've been.

I tried to dress you for the occasion; you had other plans

Your 2nd outfit

See the blood cells going into the red lumen? That's your
new bone marrow!

-Mom and Dad