Last IV Stem Cell Treatment! One Spinal Treatment To Go!

Brandon had an IV stem cell treatment today. Everything went well & he's doing great. He's very hyper today - jumping around and running up and down the corridor. This morning at 8 am the nurses came knocking on the door wanting to start the IV. I asked them to please come back later since he still had 6 hours before the treatment started. There was no sense in waking him up so early just to torture him. 10 MINUTES later they came back. I told them "No, LATER". So they came back at 10 am. I gave in and woke Brandon up. At 2 pm we went to the IV room and started treatment. I noticed that the stem cells weren't really yellow like usual. I asked the nurse why it was so pale in color. They told me that they would have a Dr. come in and talk to me about it. About 30 minutes after treatment, the Dr came in and explained to me that when they are culturing the stem cells, they try to remove as many red blood cells as possible but they are not always able to. So the more yellow the stem cell bag, the more red blood cells. Apparently you do not want it to be so yellow. So we learned something new today. Brandon is up to the letter R. I'm sure if I pushed him, he could've gotten through the whole alphabet by now however today I had a hard time getting him to sit still. We worked on letters for about 20 minutes & then he was done with it. Maybe this weekend will be calmer for him. If not then I know on Wednesday when he's laying down for 6 hours, he won't be able to run from it!! Tomorrow Brandon will get his wish. He wants to go to the beach and see the water. So we're going to spend the day out. After awhile the walls start closing in on you & you begin to feel like a caged animal. We went for a walk tonight but Brandon didn't like it (he just hates to walk). He kept begging me to get a taxi to take him back to the hospital :) 10 days until we come home!!

Countdown begins - 12 days until we come home!!

Today I reviewed A - L with Brandon hoping that he would remember them from yesterday. He did!! He gets the capital letters "J" & "I" confused but that's because he doesn't look for the curl at the bottom of J before telling me what it is. So we worked on that for awhile. We are now at the letter "Q" so he's learned 5 more letters today. I keep reviewing through the first 17 letters of the alphabet with him so he won't forget. Also we discovered he can see the letters at 28 point if he gets up close to the letters. That is truly amazing since you can get large print books at 28 point - even up to 48 point. Guess what this means..... We reached our goal. Brandon WILL be able to read large print (once he learns how to read actual words instead of braille). Brandon has a chance to improve even more over the course of a year so we're not done! I truly believe the stem cell treatment will exceed our goal of large print. We are so happy & words cannot express how grateful we are that our community helped Brandon. We know that we couldn't have gotten here without the support from friends, family & people we have never met. From the bottom of our hearts.....Thank you. Thank you for giving Brandon this new life. The sky is the limit for him! Photo's: Brandon is working on his letters! The first photo shows a 100 pt capital "D". The 2nd shows a 300 pt capital "C". Both of which he can see really well at the distance that he's at from the computer - YEAH BRANDON!!

Wanna hear some Good news or Great news??

They're home!! John, Mom, Courtney & Nick arrived a few hours ago. They are tired but safe & happy to be home. They immediately started in on the laundry to try & get the stench of China off their clothes. Brandon & I will probably have to throw our clothes away - don't think the smell will ever come off them! The dog ate our remote from our television. Several souvenirs that we had bought for our family & friends back home broke. I really think the airlines took a hammer to their suitcases because I had packaged everything up as good as I possibly could. Oh well lesson #7,098,547,362 - never buy breakables & put them in the checked baggage. Now for some exciting news. Today Brandon & I were looking on the computer at pictures when he started pointing at each person & telling me who they are. He knew what we looked like before but only if he got in our faces & then on some days he couldn't tell John & I apart. Anyway these pictures showed each person several feet away from the camera. I was pretty excited about that so I decided to start working on flash cards. Since I don't have flash cards, I started typing letters on Microsoft Word using 300 pt. (just to start teaching Brandon the letters). I started with the letter A and finished with the letter L. Brandon quickly learned those letters & could tell me what each one was. I started to wonder if maybe he was taught this in school so I threw in the letter N and he said "ooh what's that one?" I know for a fact that he didn't know this before nor was he able to see the letters before treatment. Over the next few days I'll slowly introduce more of the alphabet to him. I brought the Dr. in so he could see it. The Dr. was so excited and said "I can't wait until the next spinal!" He said that he would ask his wife & see if they had any flash card of animals so we could work with Brandon on that. We are so happy to see results like this. After getting the MRI results we really weren't sure what if any results we would get from it. But now we're back on track - we're getting results & it will only continue to get better!! We miss our friends & family - the ones we left back home & the ones who just left us yesterday. But now we have renewed energy & we know that we can make it though the next 13 days. We probably won't eat another chicken or pizza for the rest of our lives but my son has more sight and that's all that matters!

They're Off

Well John, Mom, Courtney & Nick left Qingdao at 2:50 pm China's time (12:50 am Mountain Time - 1:50 am Central Time). Currently they are in Seoul, Korea awaiting their plane for LA. It was so hard to say goodbye to them. They have been here through the good times & the bad times. Now it's just Brandon & I. Brandon is taking it hard. He cried for quite awhile after they left the hospital. He had a spinal stem cell treatment today 50 minutes after everyone had left to go to the airport. Everything went fine and right now he's lying flat in bed. He's not too happy since he's unable to eat for another hour & 15 minutes. So far this was the best spinal he's had. He didn't have any allergic reactions & so far no signs of headache, backache, or fever. His cranial pressure was also down to 200 - YEAHH!! Still a little high but better than before! That could be why Brandon's feeling good right now compared to last time. We'll keep you posted on how Brandon's doing & also when John, Mom & the kids arrive home.

Saturday's trip

As our last trip outside of the hospital as a family, we chose to go to the mountains. Seems fitting since we live so close to Pike's Peak. We had our favorite driver stop at KFC so we could have lunch on our way up there. Now usually our driver takes it easy on us. He's our favorite driver because he doesn't try to kill us just to get ahead of another vehicle. However I believe he was having an off day because we all held on for dear life! As we headed up the side of the mountain, the ocean was directly below us on the right side. There was a 2 1/2 ft high barrier to "prevent" cars from falling off the road into the ocean however I don't think it would've been much help if we had hit it. Anyway as mentioned previously speed limits are a mere suggestion around here & these people like to see who can be the fastest. As we sped up the side of that mountain on a narrow 2 lane road, all I could think of was what would we die from - the accident itself or drowning in the sea. We finally arrived to our destination - an old Buddist Temple. A tourist guide offered to explain it's history for 30 RMB's. I figured it would be nice to learn about the temple so we agreed to hire him to take us around. We soon realized that his English really isn't that great and we didn't learn to much from him however just being there was an amazing experience. The grounds consisted of several old buildings and from what little we did learn from the tourist guide, the King lived in one building while his many wives lived in one across the courtyard. It was so peaceful & I'm happy that we were able to see it. When we left the Temple, the ocean was right across the road. As we headed towards the sea, we became surrounded by souvenir vendor's. The driver tried to keep them away from us but they were relentless. Unfortunately we weren't able to enjoy the view because the vendor's kept sticking things in front of our faces so we headed to the van as quickly as we could. They were still trying to sell us stuff as we were loading into the van! The driver was so funny though - he yelled at them to get away but since they didn't he got in the van and floored it. All we could do was hold onto the kids and the handles. Since wearing seat belts are not required here, the seat belts are all covered by seat covers. Nick hit the floor a couple of times because the driver would slam on his breaks & we couldn't grab him fast enough. After leaving the Temple, we headed back though the mountain. Another van tried to pass us and our driver sped up. I told him "No rush!" and he just laughed. On the way to the Temple, I had noticed a nice beach that had relatively no people there so on the way back, we asked the driver to pull over so we could let the kids play for awhile. We took our shoes off & played on the beach for awhile. Brandon loved it! He would laugh every time a wave hit his legs. I'm so glad Brandon had a great time. I mean the hospital isn't bad but it does get boring and it almost becomes necessary to just get out. In the last 3 weeks we were out 3 times as a family. With the whole family here, it made this trip a lot more bearable. We were able to experience this together and we're grateful. THANK YOU RONNIE for making this possible. Without your help, half of us would've had to stay home. We are so happy that we were able to be together for as long as we were. Photo's: 1st - Brandon playing on the beach. 2nd - All of us enjoying the time together on the beach - Worry free!! 3rd - Courtney playing in the water. 4th - A nice quiet walk through the grounds at the Temple (you could almost imagine what it must've been like back in the day) 5th - John at the Buddist Temple 6th - More of the grounds at the Temple. You walk through this door and that's the view you get - breathtaking! 7th - We stopped at a landmark on our way to the Temple to see a waterfall. Across the street there is an amazing view of the sea and these huge rocks. 8th - Only John, Nick & I chose to get out of the van to see the waterfall & pose in front of the giant seashell - wonder what it says behind the seashell??