DAY 0 !

Well, the transplant is complete. Brett's doing fine. I can't tell you the relief I feel now that his part is over. We have a road ahead of us, but we made it over the first bump.
Tyler did awesome today. It all started at 7:30 this morning. He was hooked up to the pheresis machine that did the work of drawing the blood out of one arm, spinning out the stem cells and putting the remaining blood back in to Tyler's other arm. It took a little over 5 hours...if my brain is calculating correctly.
Than a few hours later at 4pm a bag of stem cells arrived at Brett's door. They hooked up the bag to his hickman cathater - which is like a permanent iv line in Brett's chest. And we watched...
it took about 1/2 an hour and Brett was done. The cells ran into the line like a regular bag of fluid... Brett had no reaction what so ever. He just sat there - watching a soccer game on tv with Tyler. Brett told Tyler that as soon as the cells arrived in the room the soccer game just appeared on the TV!!!
Tyler had no side effects, at least that is what he is telling us. He is having some stiffness in his knee, which is already injured. The nurse told him that the shots could be aggrivating his knee a little bit more than usual. His platelet count is a little low... the doctor says the pheresis machine chews up the platelets so those don't get replenished back with the rest of the blood, so Tyler has to be carefull not to get injured in the next week. No contact sports or weight lifting ... which if you know Tyler is a huge request. He loves to exercise!! He's in great shape which helped so much today.
We can never really express our gratitude to Tyler for giving this fabulous gift. When Brett and I started dating I think Tyler was 8. So I've gotten the privilage of being able to watch Tyler grow in to this amazing man. He jumped into this ready for anything. Able to bring a baby into this world in one week and help save Brett the next. Thank you Tyler, we love you
Thank you Alanna for everything and for sitting in the hospital all day...waiting....
and yes, thank you Quinn for bringing a little sunshine into our day.
Alanna's mom was here too to help watch the baby while the whole thing happened. And God love her... she was willing to sit in the car with the baby if the baby wasn't going to be allowed up on the hospital floor. Thank goodness for the family room so she didn't have to do that!
Thanks Claud and Hank for being here- we love you guys.
Well, I need to get back to Brett. I cannot begin to thank you all for the prayers, emails, text and all the love that was sent to us. The net was there to catch him today!! I witnessed it!
I'll blog again tomorrow -
peace, love and happiness