OCTOBER 26, 2008
Logan's continuing to do well. We've slowly been able to get him to sleep in his crib fo half the night which is a start. He also continues to eat - but he's not drinking fluids, just eating solids. The doctors want him to drink fluids so he can get the nutrition that the TPN is giving him so we are still working on that. The feeding tube is still a consideration but they're going to wait awhile to see how he does - the speech therapist should help with his eating habits.

Logan is now down to two clinic visits a week - Tuesdays and Fridays and hopefully soon he'll drop down to just every Friday. We're hoping that next week they take him off of another one of his blood pressure medicines and that he'll also be taken off the IV Cyclosporine and start on oral Cyclosporine. (Cyclosporine is the medicine that keeps his old cells supressed and lets his new cells continue to thrive)

Additionally, his steroid intake will drop to 1mg next week so they will start him on Hydrocortizone which is the replacement for his steroids. So within the next three weeks he'll be completely off the steroids and the Hydrocordizone will take its place, which he'll most likely be on for the next year.

Outside of his eating/TPN issues, the doctors say that he's right on track on where he should be. They also say that when they start weening him off his TPN is when they'll be able to nail down a better date on when he can head home to Michigan.

OCTOBER 17, 2008
Update: About six new picture have been uploaded to the "Out of hte Hospital" gallery. Logan's been doing pretty good overall. We're still having issues with his clinginess but other than that he's making progress. He has gone down one one of his blood pressure medicines and if his blood pressure is good on Monday they'll remove it completely. They lowered his steroids again and should be off it completely in three weeks. His Cyclosporine may soon become an oral medicine knocking off one IV med that he has to take and his eating is slowly getting better.

He's got physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy starting up which should help catch him up to where he's supposed to be. The speech therapy will also help him start to eat better. While his appetite seeminly continues to grow he won't have anything to do with a bottle or a sippy cup. But the fact that he's eating is a good sign. Other than that, all of his levels are doing fine.

All of his levels have been great, though. He needed a blood tansfusion earlier this week but his Platelets continue to go up - they're at about 60 now. But overall, the doctors are very happy with his progress.

OCTOBER 11, 2008
Well, it was a horrible time for my computer to mess up on me but I think I have everything working again. Last week brough both good news and bad news. The bad, obviously, was the passing of Alyssa Louden. She passed away on October 8 at around 8:30 p.m. She was a fighter, there's no doubt about that. She had numerous obstacles to pass - including the shunt and the bad day of first chemotherapy - and it's truly a shame that we won't see her on our yearly visits. But to say she touched our family is an understatment.

Logan, though, has been doing real well for the most part. We're constantly battling with him for him to get some independence away from us but he only wants to be held and really only wants to be held by his mother. However, he's been doing so well that on Friday they decided that we only had to go to clinic on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. They have taken him off one of his Blood pressure medications completely, the nasty-tasting Labetalol and on Monday he is off another medication called Cellcept. This is standard after a child is 60 days post-transplant. And finally, he no longer needs the hard masks, he can wear the smaller masks that he wore when he was in 5200.

His platelet counts have been rising. And generally, after released there is a constant, yet slow drop in both HGBs and PLT's. So the fact that his platelets seem to be going up is a good thing. His HGB's continue to go down little by little so he'll probably need more in the next week. The hope is that soon instead of his levels slowly dropping that they'll even out and then start growing.

We'll try updating every few days or so because now that we're not going to clinics everyday we won't have any new information. Plus, hopefully computer wont' go on the fritz again.

OCTOBER 5, 2008
Logan's been doing fine. His numbers are still good and his blood pressures are hit and miss. A lot of times when he's active his BP is high but when he falls asleep the pressure is low. But, they're okay with the BP he gets when he's sleeping. Other than that - no news is good news. His clinic visits last an hour or two but all the news so far is good.

I've put a few pictures up in a new gallery. A few pictures are of Logan, but one is of all the medicines he takes at night and the other is all the IV stuff we get to work with. I will be putting a sidebar up in the next few days as well as his discharge video on the site.

OCTOBER 3, 2008
Today was a pretty packed day. The morning startd out with a nurse coming out and helping us with his IV meds. After getting his oral meds we headed to the clinic. Fridays are the day that his doctor, Dr. Prasad, does clinic visits so that's our scheduled long day - and they weren't wrong. We were there for about five hours. He looked to be retaining some water so he received some Lasiks and Platelets. They say Platelets are the last thing that will really reach high numbers, so him getting those isn't a big deal. His BP went up a little bit near the end of the clinic visit but we've been having issues with his oral medications. Plus, they lowered his steroids by .5 so hopefully his blood pressure will go down with that decrease. They also lowered his methadone intake to once a day to get him off the pain meds.

So once we got back our nurse visited with us again and we hooked up his IV stuff again. Then we gave him his oral meds, he threw it up so we gave them all again. So far he's keeping them down.

Hopefully all goes well this weekend. If he does well up until next Friday they'll cut down the number of times that he'll go to clinic. I think it's safe to say that when they cut down his daily clinic visits, the chance of him going back to 5200 are slim. I would guess that if his BP goes up they'll give him daily boosts at the clinic and if that doesn't help then he will be re-admitted to 5200, so pray that his BP stays low because that's our biggest concern. His lab results otherwise were good - they were happy with his levels.

Because we're now back to looking at specific numbers, I may put the sidebar back up, adding his final blood pressure reading for the clinic visit. It's just me and Meg now, Ralph and Marva has gone home so we'll miss them and the help they gave. Logan will also go through Grandpa-withdrawl because his Grandpa holding him almost fixed any temper-tantrums that Logan had.

Please continue to pray for Alyssa. From what we've been reading nothing terrible has happened so the prayers seem to be working.