10.20.2007 - Boston in the Fall

From Julian's COTA Journal.

We celebrated Julian's birthday in Boston this year. It’s hard to believe he’s already three years old! We took Julian to Boston in order to visit the Children’s Hospital there for a second opinion. As parents, it’s difficult to resolve the notion that your child needs such serious treatment in order to maintain overall health, especially since he appears to be doing so well. If someone were that sick, wouldn’t they at least look and/or feel ill as well? Is it even possible for someone to outgrow such a condition?

The doctor we met with in Boston, after reviewing 150+ pages of his medical history, concurred with our doctors here in Denver, reassuring us that we’re on the right track. In fact, it’s best to begin organ replacement treatment (he was careful to point out that a kidney transplant is a treatment, not a cure) when the patient is at his best, in order to ensure a good recovery post-transplant. If we were to wait until he became very ill and/or stopped growing, the results post-surgery could be disastrous.

So now we wait for an organ. It’s a difficult thing to pray for, because unless the organ comes from a living donor, it has to be ‘cadaveric’, which is a tidy term that means it came from someone recently deceased. Kidneys from live donors have a better track record for longevity, but a cadaveric kidney will work too. In any case, we’ll take what God provides, and let him work out the details.

That's it for now - we're working on the fall newsletter, which should be in the mail sometime next week. We're doing well, and enjoying the fall colors here in Lyons.